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Theodore Roosevelt 






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^REALIZABLE 
IDEALS 

(THE EARL LECTURES) 



By 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



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SAN FRANCISCO 

WHITAKER & RAY-WIGGIN CO. 

1912 



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COPYRIGHT 
BY 

Theodore Roosevelt 

1911 



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INTRODUCTION 

THE addresses printed in this volume were 
delivered under the auspices of Pacific 
Theological Seminary by the Hon. Theodore 
Roosevelt, as Earl Lecturer, in the Spring of 
1911. The Seminary is fortunate in possessing 
a Lectureship founded by Mr. Edwin T. Earl in 
1901, whose purpose, as stated in the articles of 
foundation, is "to aid in securing at the Univer- 
sity of California the presentation of Christian 
truth by bringing to Berkeley year by year emi- 
nent Christian scholars and thinkers to speak 
upon themes calculated to illustrate and dissem- 
inate Christian thought and minister to Christian 
life." The uncommon public interest which this 
series of lectures aroused, and the attendance of 
many thousands who daily crowded the Greek 
Theatre to hear them, emphasized to the Lecture- 
ship Committee the desirability of yielding to a 
wide-spread demand for their publication. Since 
Mr. Roosevelt did not have a manuscript, ar- 
rangements were made for an accurate steno- 
graphic report, which was afterwards submitted 
to him for revision. So much should be said in 
explanation of the forensic form of these lectures. 
Their fine ethical purpose justifies the hope that 
they may continue to stimulate good citizenship 
in wider circles than those which came within 
reach of the speaker's voice. 

William Frederic Bade. 

September, 1911. 

Pacific Theological Seminary, 

Berkeley, California, 



REALIZABLE IDEALS 

When I was first asked to deliver this 
course of lectures I refused just because 
what I wanted to preach was action. 
I did not feel sure that I could preach 
action in five lectures. I finally accept- 
ed, because it seemed to me so admirable 
a thing for the Seminary to have started 
this kind of a lecture course and so ad- 
mirable a thing for the founder of the 
course to have provided for it that I did 
not feel quite at liberty to refuse. 

All our extraordinary material de- 
velopment, our wonderful industrial 
growth will go for nothing unless with 
that growth goes hand in hand the 
moral, the spiritual growth that will en- 
able us to use aright the other as an 
instrument. I hesitated some time as to 
exactly what title to give to the lectures 
I was to deliver because I wanted to 



Realizable Ideals 



use the two titles of Applied Ethics 
and Realizable Ideals. I chose these 
titles because they seemed to me to put 
into words the only spirit which I 
think counts for anything in preaching, 
whether by a professional or by an ama- 
teur; the spirit which regards preaching 
as worthless unless transmitted into 
action. If we treat the study of ethics 
as a mere intellectual diversion then we 
probably do ourselves little harm and 
certainly do ourselves no good. If we 
consciously or carelessly preach ideals 
which cannot be realized and which we 
do not intend to have realized, then so 
far from accomplishing a worthy pur- 
pose we actually tend to weaken the 
morality we ostensibly preach. Now, 
anything I have to say to you during 
these lectures will derive its whole value 
from the spirit in me as I say it and the 

2 



Realizable Ideals 



spirit in you as you listen to it. If I 
preach to you anything which I do 
not strive, with whatever haltings and 
shortcomings, myself to realize then I 
am unworthy for you to listen to; and 
if, on the other hand, you come to listen 
to me from mere curiosity, or to get a 
little temporary enjoyment, then you 
would better have stayed at home. 

I chose as the opening lecture this ad- 
dress on realizable ideals, because the 
longer I have lived the more strongly I 
have felt the harm done by the practice 
among so many men of keeping their 
consciences in separate compartments; 
sometimes a Sunday conscience and a 
weekday conscience; sometimes a con- 
science as to what they say or what they 
like other people to say, and another 
conscience as to what they do and like 
other people to do; sometimes a con- 

3 



Realizable Ideals 



science for their private affairs and a 
totally different conscience for their 
business relations. Or again, there may 
be one compartment in which the man 
keeps his conscience not only for his 
domestic affairs but for his business 
affairs and a totally different compart- 
ment in which he keeps his conscience 
when he deals with public men and pub- 
lic measures. 

It has always irritated me when, in 
whatever capacity, I have attended Sun- 
day School celebrations, to listen to 
some of the speeches made, and espe- 
cially when I knew some of the men 
making them. I have always felt most 
strongly that it was mischievous and 
wrong for a man to get up before a num- 
ber of boys and girls and preach to them 
to "take no thought of things of the 
body," not "to regard their own inter- 

4 



Realizable Ideals 



ests in any way," to think of "nothing 
whatever but others," when they knew 
that he did not follow any such course 
of action himself, and when they knew 
that they themselves could not act and 
were not expected to act, literally on his 
words. That kind of a speech does 
harm, because harm is always done by 
preaching an ideal which the preacher 
and the hearer know cannot be followed, 
which they know it is not intended to 
have followed; for then the hearer con- 
founds all ideals with the false ideal to 
which he is listening; and because he 
finds that he is not expected to live up 
to the doctrine to which he has listened 
he concludes that it is needless to live 
up to any doctrine at all. 

Now I do not mean for a moment that 
the ideal preached should be a low one; 
I do not mean for a moment that it is 



Realizable Ideals 



ever possible entirely to realize even for 
the very best man or woman the loftiest 
ideal; but I do mean that the ideal 
should not be preached except with sin- 
cerity, and that it should be preached 
in such a fashion as to make it possible 
measurably to approach it. 

Take the Sunday School address of 
the type to which I object and of which 
I have just spoken : If you tell a number 
of boys who are about to become men 
and go out to earn their own living — if 
you tell them to despise the things of 
the body, to care nothing for material 
success, you are telling them what you 
would not want your own boys actually 
to do; you are telling them what they 
cannot do unless they are willing to be- 
come public charges, and what it is not 
desirable that they should try to do. To 
tell them such things in the name of 

6 



Realisable Ideals 



morality is to invite them to despise 
morality. What is necessary is to tell 
them that their first duty is to earn their 
own livelihood, to support themselves 
and those dependent upon them; but 
that when that first duty has been per- 
formed there yet remains a very large 
additional duty, in the way of service 
to their neighbor, of service to the rest 
of mankind. 

Again, I have heard men, whose lives 
have been passed chiefly in amassing 
money, preach to boys that money 
was of no real consequence, that they 
ought to disregard it, that it was really 
entirely unimportant. Well, those men 
did not in practice believe what they 
preached. Curiously enough some of 
them had for so many years schooled 
themselves to utter that kind of a sen- 
tence when they got on a platform, and 

7 



Realizable Ideals 



to act in such diametrically opposite 
fashion when they were in their business 
offices, that they had ceased to become 
conscious of any incongruity; when 
they got up to speak they naturally fell 
into the very vice that represented the 
negation of the other vice into which 
they equally naturally fell as soon as 
they sat down before their counting- 
desk. Now, it is a false statement, and 
therefore it is a disservice to the cause 
of morality, to tell any man that money 
does not count. If he has not got it he 
will find that it does count tremendous- 
ly. If he is worth his salt and is desir- 
ous of caring for mother and sisters, 
wife and children, he will not only find 
that it counts but he will realize that he 
has acted with infamy and with baseness 
if he has not appreciated the fact that 
it does count. And of course, when I 
8 



Realizable Ideals 



speak of money I mean what money 
stands for. It counts tremendously. 
No man has any right to the respect of 
his fellows if through any fault of his 
own he has failed to keep those depend- 
ent upon him in reasonable comfort. It 
is his duty not to despise money. It is 
his duty to regard money, up to the 
point where his wife and children and 
any other people dependent upon him 
have food, clothing, shelter, decent sur- 
roundings, the chance for the children to 
get a decent education, the chance for 
the children to train themselves to do 
their life work aright, a chance for 
wife and children to get reasonable re- 
laxation. Now practically, as regards 
his or her own family, I doubt if there is 
anyone here who would deny that prop- 
osition. It is so obvious that it seems 
needless to put it before you; and yet 
9 



Realisable Ideals 



how often do we listen to a man on a 
platform like this, saying, because it is 
the conventional thing to say, "pay no 
heed to money/' Now, of course, when 
such a preacher says "pay no heed to 
money'' his hearers at once accept what 
he is about to say further as insincere; 
and, whether they pay heed to money 
or not, they pay no further heed to what 
he says about it. 

It is not a realizable ideal, to "pay no 
heed to money." You must pay heed 
up to the point I have indicated. But 
it is a realizable ideal, after you have 
once reached that point, to understand 
that money is merely a means to an end, 
and that if you make it the end instead 
of a means you do little good to your- 
self and are a curse to everybody else. 
It is a realizable ideal, to make people 
understand that while it is their first 
10 



Realizable Ideals 



duty to pull their own weight in the 
world, yet that after they have achieved 
a certain amount of prosperity both 
their capacity for usefulness toward 
others and their capacity for enjoyment 
depends infinitely more on other things 
than upon possessing additional money. 
Now, the very fact that I grant in the 
fullest degree the need of having enough 
money, which means the need of suffi- 
cient material achievement to enable 
you and those dependent upon you to 
lead your lives healthily and under de- 
cent conditions — the very fact that I 
grant this as the essential first need to 
meet, entitles me to have you accept 
what I say at its face value when I add 
that this represents only the beginning, 
and that after you have reached this 
point your worth as a unit in the com- 
monwealth, your worth to others and 

11 



Realisable Ideals 



your worth to yourself, depends infin- 
itely less upon having additional money 
than it depends upon your possessing 
certain other things, things of the soul 
and the spirit. 

I could not overstate the grinding 
misery, the heart-breaking misery, I 
have seen come to a family where the 
man is unable quite to do what he ought 
to for those dependent upon him. But 
after the man and the woman have 
reached the point where they have a 
home in which the elemental needs are 
met and where in addition they have 
accumulated a comparatively small 
amount of money necessary to meet the 
primal needs of the spirit and of the 
intellect — after this point is reached it 
is my deliberate judgment that money, 
instead of being the prime factor, is one 
of the minor factors, both in usefulness 

12 



Realisable Ideals 



and in happiness. Always keep in mind 
my first proviso — I am not going to re- 
peat it to you — as to the necessity of 
having enough money. But go beyond 
that; for beyond that, the difference be- 
tween the multi-millionaire and the man 
of very moderate fortune is in the vast 
majority of cases really a difference of 
appearance and not of reality as regards 
both usefulness and happiness. The 
chief harm that the multi-millionaire 
does in my mind comes not in his join- 
ing with others to make a trust — al- 
though when he does that I will try to 
regulate him — and it is not in the fact 
that in him as in other men there is, as 
Abraham Lincoln put it, "a deal of 
human nature," so that he is sometimes 
very good and sometimes not good at 
all; it is that he is apt to give to the rest 
of us a thoroughly false ideal. The 

13 



Realisable Ideals 



worst ill that can befall us is to have 
our own souls corrupted, and it is a de- 
basing thing for a nation to choose as 
its heroes the men of mere wealth. 

I remember a number of years ago 
seeing a pleasant and very happy little 
community very nearly ruined — and as 
regards many of the families completely 
ruined — because an entirely amiable 
multi-millionaire moved into the neigh- 
borhood. I really think that his amia- 
bility and his perfectly sincere desire to 
be pleasant with everyone was one of 
the causes of the mischief. I know, for 
instance, a very nice woman there, with 
a charming little house, who, having 
been asked to dinner at the very gor- 
geous mansion of this worthy soul of 
many millions, naturally wished to en- 
tertain him and his wife in return. But, 
alas, she was perfectly wretched when it 
14 



Realisable Ideals 



actually came to entertaining them in 
her house; she was not willing to have 
the hired girl wait on the table; she 
had to have a butler, and then she had 
to live up to the butler. And the fun- 
ny thing was . instead of giving the 
multi-millionaire a perfectly pleasant 
time in her own fashion, which she 
could have done, she merely gave him a 
dreary tenth-rate imitation of his own 
feasts. Instead of putting herself in a 
totally different class, so that there 
could be no competition between them 
at all, she insisted on competing in a 
class where she was certain to get the 
worst of it. After two or three years of 
the millionaire's residence in the neigh- 
borhood there were not a few families 
who had suffered either some perma- 
nent damage or grave temporary dis- 
comfort, not from any fault of the mil- 
is 



Realisable Ideals 



lionaire, but because they themselves 
had been foolish. Now, I don't want to 
preach against the millionaire; but I do 
want to preach against us if we let him 
make us spoil ourselves — that's all. 

I wish us to understand better than 
we now do what are the real things and 
what are the artificial things of life. I 
wish us to get a better perspective. 
Take even the average educational in- 
stitution; if a very wealthy man visits 
it altogether too many of the boys look 
at him with eager interest, as a man that 
has had just the career that they intend 
to emulate; and altogether too many of 
the girls think that they would like to 
marry into his class ! Now, in that case, 
I don't blame him at all; I think it mere- 
ly adds to our sin, to our iniquity, if we 
blame him instead of ourselves for the 
feelings, not that he has about us, but 

16 



Realizable Ideals 



that we have about him. But I do blame 
ourselves; I blame us if we do not have 
a proper sense of perspective, if we fail 
to pay honor to the people who are enti- 
tled to it. I do not wonder that a great 
many men make of money-getting their 
one ideal when so many of their fellow 
countrymen treat success in making 
money as the chief kind of success. 

When America's history is written, 
when the history of the last century in 
America is written a hundred years 
hence, the name of no multi-millionaire, 
who is nothing but a multi-millionaire, 
will appear in that history, unless it 
appears in some foot-note to illustrate 
some queer vagary or extravagance. 
The men who will loom large in our 
history are the men of real achievement 
of the kind that counts. You can go 
over them— statesmen, soldiers, wise 
17 



Realisable Ideals 



philanthropists— I wish to underscore 
the word "wise," for the philanthropist 
who is really worth calling such is the 
man who tries to make such use of his 
philanthropy as to provide against the 
need of philanthropy in the future, just 
as the real worker in charity is the 
worker who does his best to bring about 
conditions in which charity shall not be 
necessary. The statesman, the writer, 
the man of science, of letters, of art, 
these are the men who will leave their 
mark on history. 

When you look back and think of the 
Civil War, what lives of those who then 
lived would you, if you had a chance, 
like yourselves to have lived? Not the 
lives of the sordid souls who stayed at 
home and made money out of the Civil 
War; not even the lives of those men 
who were not sordid, who acted honora- 

18 



Realisable Ideals 



bly in their private business at home, 
but who did not have the opportunity 
and privilege of going to the front. The 
lives that you respect, the lives that you 
wish your fathers or forefathers to have 
led, are those of the men who in the 
time of the Nation's trial each endeav- 
ored to render all the service that could 
possibly be rendered to the nation. 
Those are the men of the past to whose 
memory we look up, of whose fame we 
as Americans are jealous, whose good 
deeds we would like to emulate. Now, 
that is our attitude toward the past; I 
ask that we make it also our attitude in 
the present. 

I wish it distinctly to be understood 
that I have not the smallest prejudice 
against multi-millionaires. I like them. 
But I always feel this way when I meet 
one of them : You have made millions — 
19 



Realizable Ideals 



good; that shows you must have some- 
thing in you, I wish you would show it. 

I do regard it as a realizable ideal for 
our people as a whole to demand, not of 
the millionaire — not at all — but of their 
own children and of themselves, that 
they shall get the millionaire in his 
proper perspective, and when they once 
do that ninety-five per cent of what is 
undesirable in the power of the million- 
aire will disappear. I shall speak of the 
other five per cent in a minute or two; 
but I am speaking now of much the 
larger part of what makes him undesir- 
able; and much of that larger part is 
not in him at all, it is in us; it is in the 
emotions we permit the sight of him to 
produce in us. 

Now, a word to my fellow reformers. 
If they permit themselves to adopt an 
attitude of hate and envy toward the 

20 



Realizable Ideals 



millionaire they are just about as badly 
off as if they adopt an attitude of mean 
subservience to him. It is just as much 
a confession of inferiority to feel mean 
hatred and defiance of a man as it is to 
feel a mean desire to please him over- 
much. In each case it means that the 
man having the emotion is not confident 
in himself, that he lacks self-confidence, 
self-reliance, that he does not stand on 
his own feet; and, therefore, in each case 
it is an admission that the man is not as 
good as the man whom he hates and 
envies, or before whom he truckles. 

So that I shall preach as an ideal 
neither to truckle to nor to hate the man 
of mere wealth, because if you do either 
you admit your inferiority in reference 
to him; and if you admit that you are 
inferior as compared to him you are no 
good American, you have no place in 

21 



Realizable Ideal 



this Republic. So that from our stand- 
point toward the millionaire ninety-five 
per cent of the damage he can do us is 
subjective and not objective; that is to 
say, it rests with us and not with him. 
There remains the five per cent of 
harm that he can do us for which we are 
not responsible. Up to this point I have 
been preaching to us about him. Now 
I want to say a word or two to him, to 
the man of great wealth. The mere ac- 
quisition of wealth in and by itself, be- 
yond a certain point, speaks very little 
indeed for the man compared with suc- 
cess in most other lines of endeavor. I 
want you to weigh the words that I have 
used — the mere acquisition of wealth in 
itself. I know that there are many men 
who have made great fortunes where 
the making of the great fortune has 
been an incident to the doing of a great 

22 



Realisable Ideals 



task, where the man has really been at 
least as much interested in the task as 
in the fortune. It is a great epic feat to 
drive a railroad across a continent; it is 
a great epic feat to build up a business 
worth building. For the man who per- 
forms that feat I have a genuine regard. 
For the man who makes a great fortune 
as an incident to rendering a great serv- 
ice I have nothing but admiration — al- 
though unfortunately the men who are 
entitled to our regard, and a little more 
— to our admiration — for the feats that 
they have thus done, have too often for- 
feited all right to that regard and ad- 
miration and more than forfeited it by 
the course that they have afterwards, or 
coincidently, pursued in regard to mon- 
ey making or in other matters. Further- 
more the wealthy men who make money 
which does not represent service are 

23 



Realizable Ideals 



public enemies; we are bound to make 
war against every form of special privi- 
lege. 

We have now definitely accepted as 
axiomatic the fact that in this country 
we have to control the use of enormous 
aggregations of wealth in business. But 
no great industrial chief should be con- 
tent to do only so much as is necessary 
to keep within the law. He may be "law 
honest," and yet be a sinister enemy of 
the commonwealth. 

One great realizable ideal for our peo- 
ple is to discourage mere law honesty. 
It is necessary to have good laws and to 
have them well enforced. But the best 
laws and the most rigid enforcement 
will not by themselves produce a really 
healthy type of morals in the commun- 
ity. In addition to the law and its en- 
forcement we must have the public 
24 



Realizable Ideals 



opinion which frowns on the man who 
violates the spirit of the law even al- 
though he keeps just within the letter. 
I cannot tell you any one way in which 
that feeling can be made to carry 
weight. I think it must find expression 
in a dozen different ways. Later in one 
of these lectures I shall discuss the or- 
gans of public opinion and public ex- 
pression — the press and the magazines. 
When they more measurably reach the 
ideal they ought to, we shall be able to 
grapple more effectually with the man 
of wealth who fails in his duty than 
we do at present. But without waiting 
for that day, we should strive to create 
in the community the sense of propor- 
tion which will make us respect the de- 
cent man who does well, and condemn 
the man who does not act decently and 
who does wrong. 

25 



Realisable Ideals 



The other day a sentence was uttered 
in the Senate by a certain Senator which 
I thought was fraught — quite uncon- 
sciously fraught— with a lesson for all 
of us. The Senator in question had 
been engaged in an impassioned speech 
on behalf of Mr. Lorimer, and in speak- 
ing of some of the unsavory creatures 
who had testified in the case he said in 
answer to a question, "Yes, they were 
fools as well as knaves/' and that in his 
experience all knaves were fools. 

That is not so. This Senator was giv- 
ing expression to a very unhealthy atti- 
tude of the public mind, the tendency to 
treat as a knave only the foolish knave, 
and to pardon the wise knave who man- 
aged to succeed in his villainy. We 
shall never come near realizing the very 
realizable ideal of honesty in business 
and public life until we make it evident 
26 



Realisable Ideals 



that the scoundrel whom we hate most 
is not the scoundrel who fails but the 
scoundrel who succeeds. The scoun- 
drel who fails is condemned by every- 
one and is laughed at by his fellow- 
knaves. It is the scoundrel who wins 
out that is the menace to this Republic, 
the menace to this great commonwealth 
of ours. Let us so shape our laws as to 
make it difficult for the scoundrel to 
succeed, and to give us at least a rea- 
sonable chance of punishing him after 
he succeeds. In addition to this, let us 
also, each of us individually and all of 
us collectively, strive to create the kind 
of public opinion which will make the 
success of such a scoundrel hardly worth 
having. The dullest man, the man with 
the thickest skin, does not enjoy very 
much a success which brings on him the 
scorn of his fellows. The old Greek 

27 



Realizable Ideals 



proverb was that "contempt would 
pierce the shell of a tortoise," and what- 
ever our people really scorn, really de- 
spise, really condemn, is something that 
the knaves among us rarely care to 
have. When we can create the public 
opinion which will mean that the aver- 
age honest man turns away from the 
successful knave one of the prime in- 
centives for being a successful knave 
will have vanished. 

To that end, friends, I again wish to 
say that we must hold up an ideal that 
can be realized. If we use language 
which would go to show that we regard 
success and failure in the business world 
as of indifference, then we shall merely 
convince every man in that world that 
we are speaking insincerely. You do 
not regard success and failure with in- 
difference. You do not regard the man 

28 



Realisable Ideals 



who fails and the man who succeeds as 
standing on the same plane; and as long 
as you do not so regard it, tell the truth 
about it. No man ever permanently 
helped a reform by lying on behalf of 
the reform. Tell the truth about it; and 
then you can expect to be believed when 
you tell further truths; the truth that 
business success, though an admirable 
thing, up to a certain point an absolutely 
necessary thing, is beyond that point 
not as admirable as some other things; 
and the truth that business success ob- 
tained, not by serving your fellows but 
by swindling your fellows, is an infamy 
and is to be so regarded by all honest 
men. 

Realizable ideals ; we must have them 
in private and in public life both. I have 
already told you of one type of sermon 
to which I strongly object. There is 

29 



Realizable Ideals 



another type to which I object almost 
as strongly, and that is the sermon 
which in its condemnation of innocent 
pleasure tends to make men confound 
vice and pleasure. I heartily abhor the 
man who practices vice because he re- 
gards it as the only kind of enjoyment. 
I do not abhor quite as much, but I at 
least as much despise, the clergyman 
who makes ready the path for such a 
man by condemning indiscriminately 
innocent enjoyment and vice. It is not 
only harmless, but it is eminently de- 
sirable, that young people should have 
a good time. 

What we wish for ourselves, and have 
a right to wish for ourselves I want to 
see us preach towards others. If you 
persuade the average boy that it is wick- 
ed to have a good time, it may have 
either one of two results: if he is a very 

30 



Realizable Ideals 



sensitive boy it may prevent him from 
ever having a good time, in which case 
I will guarantee that he makes all those 
intimately associated with him have a 
very bad time; or else, you may per- 
suade him that inasmuch as he thor- 
oughly intends to have a good time, and 
as a good time is wicked — why, in for 
a lamb, in for a sheep, and he will be 
wicked to some purpose. I ask here 
again that not only every clergyman 
but every teacher of morals — and that 
ought to include every father who is 
worth being called father — endeavor to 
help the boy in getting a good time; and 
then hold him to a rigid accountability 
if he turns that good time into a bad 
time. 

This illustrates just what I mean by 
a realizable ideal. Don't preach the im- 
possible. Don't preach what makes 

31 



Realisable Ideals 



your hearers think you are insincere. 
But have ideals and insist on their real- 
ization. If this nation has not the right 
kind of ideal in every walk of life, if we 
have not in our souls the capacity for 
idealism, the power to strive after ideals, 
then we are gone. No nation ever 
amounted to anything if it did not have 
within its soul the power of fealty to a 
lofty ideal. For that very reason it is 
our duty to avoid preaching false ideals, 
and with almost equal scrupulousness 
to avoid preaching, as desirable, ideals 
which cannot be measurably attained. 

I am to deliver three more lectures, 
and I wish in these lectures to speak of 
applied ethics, of realizable ideals; in 
the first place in the family, because that 
is the foundation of everything; in the 
next place in public life — which means 
in the collective life of all of us, in the 

32 



Realisable Ideals 



life lived on behalf of all of us; and fin- 
ally as regards the expression of public 
opinion, as regards the instruments that 
should do most to shape public opinion 
— the press, the magazines. In each of 
those three lectures I shall endeavor to 
show you why I believe we should 
change certain of the ideals we now 
have, and why I believe we should in 
every way, and, above all, by the force 
of public opinion, insist that the realiza- 
ble ideal be actually realized in practice. 



33 



THE HOME AND THE CHILD 

If this were the first of these lectures 
I would feel like apologizing for having 
brought you here under false pretenses; 
but you came here with your eyes open 
now and I haven't any sympathy for 
you! 

I spoke yesterday of applied ethics, 
of realizable ideals. Before I begin my 
regular theme of today I want to say a 
word as to my utterances yesterday. I 
intend to try to avoid the position in 
which a former fellow-townsman of 
mine, a Mr. Richard Grant White, who 
was a great Shakespearian scholar got 
himself. It was once announced that he 
was to deliver twelve lectures on Shakes- 
peare; in his first lecture he outlined 
what he intended to say in the other 
eleven; and then he spent the other elev- 
en in answering the attacks on the first. 

34 



The Home and the Child 

I intend to try to avoid getting into a 
similar predicament, but I must make 
one explanation. 

Two or three remarks that were made 
to me after the close of the lecture yes- 
terday suggested to me that I ought 
perhaps to have laid emphasis on a point 
which seemed to me so obvious that I 
did not emphasize it. Two or three gen- 
tlemen spoke to me in a way that indi- 
cated that they thought that in advo- 
cating realizable ideals I had somehow 
seemed to advocate low ideals. I do 
not believe that to most of you I con- 
veyed any such impression, but if I did I 
of course wish to correct it. I should be 
ashamed of myself unless I believed in 
high ideals. I do not think that an ideal 
is really a high ideal unless it is one that 
is at least partially realizable. My 
preaching is not against high ideals but 

35 



The Home and the Child 

against wrong ideals. I remember in a 
little story by Miss Mary E. Wilkins 
when she makes one of her characters 
say anent the leading village worthy 
who claimed to be much better than 
anyone else, "I think there are some peo- 
ple who aren't so far ahead of us as they 
are to one side of us; sometimes it is 
latitude and sometimes it is longitude 
that separates reformers." I would be 
sorry indeed to have any word of mine 
understood as implying any willingness 
to lower our ideals. All I want is to 
have the people that preach them sure 
that they are really high ideals. No 
ideal can be right for this world if it is 
not fitted to be used in this world. It 
cannot be right to preach to men and 
women a standard of conduct up to 
which you do not expect them to live. 
My plea is only that those who preach 

36 



The Home and the Child 

shall strive to preach a doctrine up to 
which it is possible to live, and that 
those who listen shall not listen merely 
to gratify their esthetic sensibilities, but 
shall listen with the serious purpose of 
applying and of acting upon the princi- 
ples laid down to them. Perhaps in 
what I had to say yesterday I ought to 
have guarded myself against the possi- 
bility of anyone's misconstruing my lan- 
guage. I hope I have so guarded my- 
self in what I have said today. 

The first place where I desire to see 
any man or woman realize his or her 
ideals is in connection with those most 
intimately thrown with him or her. The 
very first place in which it is necessary 
that ideals should be realized is in the 
man's own home. It is so elementary 
that it seems hardly necessary to say 
that everything else in our civilization 

37 



The Home and the Child 

rests upon the home; that all public 
achievement rests upon private charac- 
ter; that the state cannot go on onward 
and upward, that the nation cannot 
make progress, unless the average indi- 
vidual is of the right type, unless the 
average American is a pretty decent 
fellow and unless his wife is a still better 
fellow. It will not be possible otherwise 
for the nation permanently to rise. 

The first essential toward the achieve- 
ment of good citizenship is, of course, 
the building up the kind of character 
which will make the man a good hus- 
band, a good father, a good son; which 
will make the woman a good daughter 
when she is young, a good wife and 
mother as she grows older. Absolutely 
nothing is gained by filling a man with 
vague aspirations for the betterment of 
his kind if you have not filled him first 

38 



The Home and the Child 

of all with the desire to do decently by 
those members of mankind with whom 
he passes most of his life. 

We all of us know the type of man, 
frequently found at cross-road groceries, 
who in his abundant leisure is able to 
explain precisely how humanity should 
be benefited and the nation run, mean- 
while he himself exists at all only be- 
cause his wife takes in washing. We 
also know the man who in public life is 
filled with the loftiest aspirations; but 
whose family unite in breathing a sigh 
of relief whenever he is absent from the 
house. 

Of course there is now and then a man 
who in some given crisis plays the hero 
although on other occasions he plays the 
brute — there are such cases; but it is a 
mighty unsafe thing to proceed upon 
the assumption that because a man is 

39 



The Home and the Child 

ordinarily a brute he will therefore be 
a hero in a crisis. Disregarding the ex- 
ceptions, and speaking normally, no 
man can be of any service to the state, 
no man can amount to anything from 
the standpoint of usefulness to the com- 
munity at large, unless first and fore- 
most he is a decent man in the close rela- 
tions of life. No community can afford 
to think for one moment that great pub- 
lic service, that great material achieve- 
ment, that ability shown in no matter 
how many different directions, will 
atone for the lack of a sound family life. 
Multiplication of divorces means that 
there is something rotten in the com- 
munity, that there is some principle of 
evil at work which must be counteracted 
and overcome or widespread disaster 
will follow. In the same way, if the man 
preaches and practices a different code 

40 



The Home and the Child 

of morality for himself than that which 
he demands that his wife shall practice, 
then no profession on his part of devo- 
tion to civic ideals will in the least avail 
to alter the fact that he is fundamentally 
a bad citizen. I do not believe in weak- 
ness; I believe in a man's being a man; 
and for that very reason I abhor the 
creature who uses the expression that "a 
man must be a man" in order to excuse 
his being a vile and vicious man. 

I recollect saying to a young friend 
who was about to enter college, "My 
friend, I know that you feel that you 
ought to be a good man; now, be willing 
to fight for your principles whenever it 
is necessary; if you're willing enough to 
fight nobody will complain about your 
being too virtuous." 

If you accept only the weak man who 
cannot hold his own as the type of vir- 

41 



The Home and the Child 

tuous man, you will inevitably create an 
atmosphere among ordinary, vigorous 
young men in which they will translate 
their contempt of weakness into con- 
tempt of virtue. My plea is that the 
virtuous man, the decent man, shall be 
a strong man, able to hold his own in 
any way, just because I wish him to be 
an agent in eradicating the misconcep- 
tion that being decent somehow means 
being weak ; I want this to apply to every 
form of decency, public as well as pri- 
vate. 

The worst development that we could 
see in civic life in this country would 
be a division of citizens into two camps, 
one camp containing nice, well-behaved, 
well-meaning little men, with receding 
chins and small feet, men who mean well 
and who if they are insulted feel shocked 
and want to go home; and the other 

42 



The Home and the Child 

camp containing robust and efficient 
creatures who do not mean well at all. 
I wish to see our side — the side of de- 
cency — include men who have not the 
slightest fear of the people on the other 
side. I wish to see the decent man in 
any relation of life, including politics, 
when hustled by the man who is not 
decent, able so to hold his own that the 
other gentleman shall feel no desire to 
hustle him again. My plea is for the 
virtue that shall be strong and that shall 
also have a good time. You recollect 
that Wesley said he wasn't going to 
leave all the good times to the Devil. In 
the same way we must not leave 
strength and efficiency to the Devil's 
agents. The decent man must realize 
that it is his duty to be strong just as 
much as to be decent. There are a good 
many types of men for whom I do not 

43 



T h e H o m e and the Child 

care; and among those types I would 
put in prominent place the timid good 
man — the good man who means well 
but is afraid. I wish to see it inculcated 
from the pulpit by every ethical teacher, 
and in the home, that just to be decent 
is not enough; that in addition to being 
a decent man it is the duty of the man 
to be a strong man. And also this; to let 
the fact that he is a decent man dawn 
on his neighbors by itself, and without 
his announcing it or emphasizing it. 

With both men and women the prime 
necessity to remember is that the simple 
duties are the most important. I be- 
lieve that they also mark the way by 
which, and by which alone, it is possible 
to realize the truest and highest happi- 
ness. I have known a good many miser- 
able people in my life, and infinitely the 
most miserable among them have been 

44 



The Home and the Child 

those who have deliberately and with 
set purpose devoted their lives to the 
pursuit of what they call pleasure. A 
young girl, a young man, can be happy 
for a few years and to a certain degree, 
in following a life from which every ves- 
tige of serious effort and of attempt to 
fulfill duty has been removed; but they 
can thus be happy only at the cost of 
laying up for themselves an infinite 
store of misery in the future. In this 
audience there are many who fought in 
the great Civil War. The memories 
that those men prize are not the mem- 
ories of the days of ease, of the days 
when life was pleasant for them; the 
memories that they prize, and that they 
wish to hand down as heritages of honor 
to their children, are the memories of 
the days of toil and effort, of the days 
of the march and the battle, the weary 

45 



The Home and the Child 

months in camp, the time when in the 
full flush of their vigorous young man- 
hood they gladly risked everything — 
life itself — for the great prize of death 
in battle for the right. 

It is not given to every generation — 
fortunately it is given to only an occa- 
sional generation — to spend itself for so 
great a goal; but we can all render, not 
as distinguished, but as essential, a serv- 
ice in ordinary life, if only we will face 
the ordinary humdrum every-day duties 
in the spirit in which the soldiers of the 
Civil War faced their great and excep- 
tional task. But this we can only do if 
we put duty before pleasure, and make 
of it our highest happiness. 

As I said to you yesterday, I do not 
intend to preach anything that I do not 
think can be practiced. I call your at- 
tention to the fact that I have not said 

46 



The Home and the Child 

that you shall put duty in the place of 
pleasure; I have merely asked you to 
put it before pleasure. Pleasure has its 
place. I wish you to have a good time, 
I wish you to enjoy yourselves. But I 
wish you to remember that merely hav- 
ing a good time will turn to bitter dust in 
your mouth, to Dead Sea fruit in your 
mouth, if you devote your whole atten- 
tion only to the pursuit of pleasure, and 
especially to the pursuit of vapid pleas- 
ure. Pleasure interspersed as an occa- 
sional needed relief in doing your life 
work as duty demands that you do it — 
such pleasure is worth having. But 
pleasure pursued as a serious business 
represents about as melancholy an occu- 
pation as any that I know of anywhere. 
Of course, if you have the pure Bridge 
Club type of mind I can't expect to 
appeal to you. If unlimited Bridge, 



The Home and the Child 

continued through that section of eter- 
nity that you enjoy on this earth, 
represents your ideal, then nothing 
that I can say will in any way shake 
or alter it — which will be, not my 
fault, but yours. If, however, you have 
in you the desire for higher things, then 
I believe that it is possible to make you 
realize that in the long run your greatest 
enjoyment will come from the perform- 
ance of duty. It is very important that 
we should consider our rights; but it is 
all-important that we should consider 
our duties. 

A little while ago I was handed a let- 
ter from the Equal Suffrage Association 
asking me to speak on behalf of Woman 
Suffrage. I have always told my friends 
that it seemed to me that no man was 
worth his salt who did not think very 
deeply of woman's rights; and that no 

48 



The Home and the Child 

woman was worth her salt who did not 
think more of her duties than of her 
rights. Now, personally I am rather 
tepidly in favor of woman's suffrage. 
When the opportunity came I have al- 
ways supported it. But I have studied 
the condition of women in those states 
where they have the suffrage and in the 
adjacent states where they do not have 
it; and, after such study I have never 
been able to take as great interest in the 
question as in many other questions be- 
cause it has always seemed to me so 
infinitely less important than so many 
other questions affecting women. I do 
not think that the harm that its oppo- 
nents fear will come from it, but I do 
not think that more than a fraction of 
the good that its advocates anticipate 
will come from it. In consequence, while 
I favor it yet, as I said, I favor it tepidly, 

49 



T he Ho m e and the Child 

because I am infinitely more interested 
in other things. I do not believe that 
the question of woman's voting is a 
thousandth or a millionth part as im- 
portant as the question of keeping, and 
where necessary reviving, among the 
women of this country, the realization 
that their great work must be done in 
the home, that the ideal woman of the 
future, just like the ideal woman of the 
past, must be the good wife, the good 
mother, the mother who is able to bear, 
and to rear, a number of healthy chil- 
dren. Now, I notice that a good many 
men applauded that statement. I wish 
to say to those men in their turn that 
there is no human being with whom I 
have less sympathy than the man who is 
always loudly in favor of woman doing 
her duty while he falls short in the per- 
formance of his own. He in his turn is 

50 



T h e H o m e and the Child 

not fit to exercise the suffrage if he is 
not a good man in his own home. If he 
does not make it the first duty of his life 
to be an efficient home-maker, a good 
and loving husband, a wise and loving 
father, he is a mighty poor citizen. And 
let him be exceedingly careful that he 
occupies the proper relation towards his 
family, and does his duty to the state; 
before he tries to talk to the woman 
about keeping her proper position. Let 
him do his duty first before troubling 
himself as to how she does hers. 

I wish to speak especially about the 
relation of the home and the child. 
There is a natural — and I cannot help 
thinking a regrettable — tendency to 
treat with a certain levity what ought 
to be the great fundamental truth under- 
lying every system of morals taught in 
this country. I do not wish to see this 

51 



The Home and the Child 

country a country of selfish prosperity, 
where those who enjoy the material 
prosperity think only of the selfish grat- 
ification of their own desires, and are 
content to import from abroad not only 
their art, not only their literature, but 
even their babies. Look at the census 
returns published in 1910, and you will 
see that this country is beginning to 
travel the path that France has long 
been traveling. Two-thirds of our in- 
crease now comes from the immigrants 
and not from the babies born here, not 
from young Americans who are to per- 
petuate the blood and traditions of the 
old stock. It surely ought to be so ob- 
vious as to be unnecessary to point out 
that all thought of the next generation, 
all thought of its vocational, artistic or 
ethical training is wasted thought if 
there is not to be a next generation to 

52 



The Home and the Child 

train. The first duty of any nation that 
is worth considering at all is to perpetu- 
ate its own life, its own blood. That 
duty will not be performed unless we 
have not merely a high but a sober ideal 
of duty and devotion in family life, un- 
less our men and women realize what 
true happiness is, realize and act on the 
belief that no other form of pleasure, no 
other form of enjoyment, in any way 
takes the place of that highest of all 
pleasures which comes only in the home, 
which comes from the love of the one 
man and the one woman for each other, 
and for their children. Nothing else 
takes the place or can take the place of 
family life, and family life cannot be 
really happy unless it is based on duty, 
based on recognition of the great under- 
lying laws of religion and morality, 
of the great underlying laws of civili- 

53 



The Ho m e and the Child 

zation, the laws which if broken mean 
the dissolution of civilization. Unless 
the average man and woman are mar- 
ried and have healthy children then my 
coming before this audience is a waste 
of time and it is a waste of time 
for you in your turn to come here 
and listen to me. If you do not 
believe in your own stock enough to 
wish to see the stock kept up then you 
are not good Americans, you are not 
patriots ; and if you do not believe in this, 
then I for one shall not mourn your ex- 
tinction, and in such event I shall wel- 
come the advent of a new race that will 
take your place, because you will have 
shown that you are not fit to cumber the 
ground. 

This is the most essential and the least 
pleasant truth that I have to tell you. I 
I can't expect you to applaud it. But I 

54 



The Ho m e and the Child 

want you to think over it; and I don't 
care a rap what you think of me for tell- 
it to you, if only you will think seriously 
of the truth itself. In the long run no 
man or woman can really be happy un- 
less he or she is doing service. Happi- 
ness springing exclusively from some 
other cause crumbles in your hands, 
amounts to nothing; and in no other 
way can service as good be rendered as 
by the right type of mother and father 
— and I have put them in their order of 
precedence, the mother first, the father 
next. 

Speaking here in a great educational 
institution I wish to extend my pro- 
found sympathy to the teachers and in- 
structors who are continually brought 
into contact with what I may call the 
cuckoo style of parent — the parent who 
believes that when he can once turn his 

55 



The Home and the Child 

child into school he shifts all responsi- 
bility from his own shoulders for the 
child's education, the parent who be- 
lieves that he can buy for a certain sum 
— which he usually denounces as excess- 
ive — a deputy parent to do his work for 
him. There is no profession in this 
country quite as important as the profes- 
sion of teacher, ranging from the College 
President right down to the lowest paid 
teacher in any one of our smallest coun- 
try public schools. There is no other 
profession so important. But not the 
best teacher can wholly supply the want 
of what ought to be done in the home by 
the father and the mother. And you 
men here, I wish you to remember that 
I put the father in with the mother. I 
know perfectly well that he cannot fulfill 
quite as useful a function in the home; 
but he has his place! He has no right 

56 



The Home and the Child 

to try to shift the burden wholly upon 
the woman's shoulders and then wonder 
why the children are not better brought 
up. We continually speak — and it is 
perfectly proper that we should — of the 
enormous importance of the woman's 
work in the home. It is more important 
than the man's. She does play a greater 
part. But the man is not to be excused 
if he fails to recognize that his work in 
the home, in helping bring up, as well as 
provide for, the children, is also one of 
his primary functions. 

Just because she is more important in 
the home than the father I wish to speak 
especially to the women on one point in 
connection with bringing up children. 
One of the things that makes one sad in 
certain families is to see the harm done 
by the loving parent who is foolish. I 
trust that I need not say that I abhor 

57 



The Home and the Child 

and condemn the father and the mother 
who do not give ample and manifest love 
to the children. It is a dreadful thing 
to have a child brought up in a loveless 
home; it is a dreadful thing to have the 
children who are brought into the world 
deprived of the love and the devotion 
which is their due. But great though 
the harm is that is done by the hard, 
narrow, unsympathetic parent, it is 
hardly greater than the harm done by 
the well-meaning parent — and I regret 
to say more often by the woman than 
the man — the well-meaning parent who 
permits tenderness of heart to extend 
until it becomes softness of head. Too 
often, among hard-working friends of 
mine I have known a woman say, "I've 
had to work hard all my life and my 
daughter shall be brought up as a lady"; 
meaning — poor soul — that the daughter 

58 



The Home and the Child 

shall be brought up to be utterly worth- 
less to herself and to everyone else. I 
have often seen a good woman — at least 
a woman who was good in purpose — 
allow her children to become utterly sel- 
fish, and really elaborately trained for 
avoiding the performance of duty, under 
the mistaken impression that she was 
being kind and loving to them. The 
worst wrong that can be committed by 
you mothers and fathers to your chil- 
dren is to train them in such fashion 
that they have no recognition of duty to 
themselves or to others. Your children 
had better have been taken away from 
you and adopted somewhere else than 
brought up by you if you are guilty of 
the culpable weakness of gratifying your 
own feeling of weak, ease-loving affec- 
tion by failing to make them behave 
from the beginning as they ought to be- 
have. 

59 



The Home and the Child 

I am speaking of what I have seen in 
humble households. I have seen it in 
aggravated degree in bigger households ; 
but, just as I told you yesterday, I am 
not concerned very much with the multi- 
millionaire excepting as we are foolish 
enough to allow ourselves to be hurt by 
anything that is wrong in his example. 
I meet just as large a proportion of good 
people among multi-millionaires as 
among others; but anything merely af- 
fecting them is a small question. I am 
not dealing with them. If they all went 
wrong, and the rest of the American 
people went right, the nation would still 
be all right. 

The man in whom I am primarily inter- 
ested, the woman in whom I am most 
interested, is the average man and the 
average woman, the American whom we 
see about us running the trolley-cars, 

60 



The Home and the Child 

running the steam-cars, running every 
small business, taking care of the small 
houses, doing all the ordinary things 
around about us. It is for and to them 
that I am speaking. 

If the mother teaches the girl that 
when she comes home she is to sit in the 
front parlor at ease and let the mother 
work in the kitchen and run up and 
down stairs until at the end of the day 
she is utterly worn out, she not only 
wrongs herself — that I am not con- 
cerned about, for she is too foolish to 
have me care very much about her — but, 
what I am concerned about, she inflicts 
a dreadful wrong on the daughter and 
upon all with whom the daughter is 
afterwards to be brought into contact. 
If the girl trained in such a way is a 
fundamentally good girl she will finally 
unlearn the lesson she was taught at 

61 



The Ho m e and the Child 

home; but it will cost her years of effort 
to unlearn the lesson; and if she is of 
weak character she will have been per- 
manently spoiled. 

And in just the same way with the 
father — and here I am going to say a 
word especially to the father who is pret- 
ty well off in this world's goods. If the 
father brings up the boy in such fashion 
that he cannot do anything except spend 
money in vacuous fashion he has not 
helped the boy, he has hurt him. It 
would have been better for the boy that 
the father had never earned money at 
all than to have earned money if his 
training is to be in such fashion. Of 
course, you fathers, it is a great error to 
think that it is necessary to show need- 
less harshness to your sons. I have no 
patience with that type of twisted Pur- 
itanism which forbids the father to show 

62 



The Ho m e and the Child 

love and affection and consideration for 
his son. You do not make the boy 
hardier or better by making him miser- 
able; you do not tend to make him a 
good citizen by giving him a feeling of 
sore dislike for his parent. Make him 
your companion, make him your friend; 
do all you can for him; and then make 
him understand that in his turn he must 
do all he can for you and for the rest of 
the family. Make it a reciprocal bond 
between you. But never whether from 
carelessness or folly let him grow up 
thinking that it is proper for him to 
lead a useless or idle life or one of mere 
pleasure. We have room in this country 
for a busy leisure class but we have no 
room for an idle class, I dont care at 
which end of the social scale, whether 
of a hobo or a multi-millionaire. 

And one more word to the mother. I 

63 



The Home and the Child 

have spoken of the mother's training of 
the daughter. Perhaps it is even worse 
if the mother permits the son to grow 
up selfish and without regard for the 
feeling of others. I remember a good 
many years ago reading a little story 
that impressed me much. It described 
a tired, rather wornout mother getting 
into a railroad train with her boy. The 
mother sat by the window in the seat; 
the minute the little boy discovered that 
he was not by the window he began 
"mother, I want to sit by the window"; 
she replied "mother is tired"; then he, 
"mother, I want to sit by the window"; 
she answered "now, Johnnie, you 
wouldn't ask to sit by the window when 
poor mother is so tired"; he, pouting 
and sullen "I want to sit by the win- 
dow"; she, patiently "Johnnie, I want 
to look out of the window, I am very 

64 



The Home and the Child 

tired, I want to rest"; he, louder and 
more angry, "I want to sit by the 
window"; whereupon at last the mother 
let him sit by the window! The author 
of the story went on to say that some- 
time in the future a sad little wife would 
wonder "why men were so inconsider- 
ate"; and that the blame would rest 
really as much with Johnnie's unwise 
mother as with himself. Of course, 
what the Johnnie of that type needs is 
a firm parental hand. Let him have 
discipline in as ample a measure as love. 
I remember a most excellent back- 
woods mother whom I once knew who, 
having disciplined a boy who sadly 
needed it, was addressed by a rather 
sentimental lady of my acquaintance as 
follows: "Oh, my dear Mrs. So and So, 
I am sure it hurt you worse than it did 
him" ! To which my backwoods friend 

65 



The Home and the Child 

responded, "indeed it did not, he had 
been very bad; and I thoroughly en- 
joyed it" ! 

So my plea today is for that form of 
applied ethics which lies at the base of 
every kind of good citizenship. We 
cannot have good citizenship in the 
present unless the average man and the 
average woman do their duty in their 
homes; we cannot have good citizen- 
ship in the future unless in the average 
home the average boy and girl are so 
brought up that in the future they will 
be American men and women of the 
right type, able and anxious to meet all 
the exacting demands that American 
citizenship now makes, and that it will 
make in ever increasing degree upon our 
people as the generations pass. 



66 



THE BIBLE AND THE LIFE OF 
THE PEOPLE 

I have come here to-day, in the course 
of a series of lectures upon applied 
ethics, upon realizable ideals, to speak 
of the book to which our people owe 
infinitely the greater part of their store 
of ethics, infinitely the greater part of 
their knowledge of how to apply that 
store to the needs of our every-day life. 

There have been many collections of 
the sacred books, the sacred writings of 
the Old and New Testaments — many 
collections of note. Upon an occasion 
such as this we who think most of all 
of the King James version of the Bible 
should be the first to acknowledge our 
obligation to many of the other versions, 
especially to the earliest of the great ver- 
sions, the Vulgate of St. Jerome, a very 
great version, a version that played an 

67 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

incalculable part in the development of 
Western Europe, because it put the 
Bible into the common language of 
Western Europe, the language known 
to every man who pretended to any de- 
gree of learning — Latin — and therefore 
gave the Bible to the peoples of the 
West at a time when the old classic civil- 
ization of Greece and Rome had first 
crumbled to rottenness and had then 
been overwhelmed by the barbarian sea. 
In the wreck of the old world, Christian- 
ity was all that the survivors had to 
cling to; and the Latin version of the 
Bible put it at their disposal. 

Other versions of the Bible followed 
from time to time, and gradually men 
began to put them into the vernaculars 
of the different countries. Wyclifs 
Bible is one version to which we must 
feel under deep obligation. But the 

68 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

great debt of the English-speaking 
peoples everywhere is to the translation 
of the Bible that we all know — I trust 
I can say, all here know — in our own 
homes, the Bible as it was put forth in 
English three centuries ago. No other 
book of any kind ever written in Eng- 
lish — perhaps no other book ever writ- 
ten in any other tongue — has ever so 
affected the whole life of a people as this 
authorized version of the Scriptures has 
affected the life of the English-speaking 
peoples. 

I enter a most earnest plea that in our 
hurried and rather bustling life of to-day 
we do not lose the hold that our fore- 
fathers had on the Bible. I wish to see 
Bible study as much a matter of course 
in the secular college as in the seminary. 
No educated man can afford to be igno- 
rant of the Bible; and no uneducated 

69 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

man can afford to be ignorant of the 
Bible. Occasional critics, taking sec- 
tions of the Old Testament, are able to 
point out that the teachings therein are 
not in accordance with our own convic- 
tions and views of morality, and they 
ignore the prime truth that these deeds 
recorded in the Old Testament are not 
in accordance with our theories of 
morality because of the very fact that 
these theories are based upon the New 
Testament, because the New Testament 
represents not only in one sense the ful- 
fillment of the Old but in another sense 
the substitution of the New Testament 
for the Old in certain vital points of 
ethics. If critics of this kind would study 
the morality inculcated by the Old Test- 
ament among the chosen people, and 
compare it, not with the morality of to- 
day, not with the morality created by 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

the New Testament, but with the moral- 
ity of the surrounding nations of anti- 
quity, who had no Bible, they would 
appreciate the enormous advances that 
the Old Testament even in its most 
primitive form worked for the Jewish 
people. The Old Testament did not 
carry Israel as far as the New Testa- 
ment has carried us; but it advanced 
Israel far beyond the point any neigh- 
boring nation had then reached. 

In studying the writings of the aver- 
age critic who has assailed the Bible the 
most salient point is usually his pecu- 
liar shallowness in failing to understand, 
not merely the lofty ethical teachings of 
the Bible as we now know it, but the 
elemental fact that even the most primi- 
tive ethical system taught in the primi- 
tive portions of the Bible, the earliest of 
the sacred writings, marks a giant stride 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

in moral advance when compared with 
the contemporary ethical conceptions of 
the other peoples of the day. 

Moreover, I appeal for a study of the 
Bible on many different accounts, even 
aside from its ethical and moral teach- 
ings, even aside from the fact that all- 
serious people, all men who think deeply, 
even among non-Christians, have come 
to agree that the life of Christ, as set 
forth in the four Gospels, represents 
an infinitely higher and purer morality 
than is preached in any other book of 
the world. Aside from this, I ask that 
the Bible be studied for the sake of the 
breadth it must give to every man who 
studies it. I cannot understand the men- 
tal attitude of those who would put the 
Bible to one side as not being a book of 
interest to grown men. What could in- 
terest men who find the Bible dull? The 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

Sunday newspaper? Think of the differ- 
ence there must be in the mental make- 
up of the man whose chief reading in- 
cludes the one, as compared with the 
man whose chief reading is represented 
by the other — the vulgarity, the shallow- 
ness, the inability to keep the mind 
fixed on any serious subject, which is 
implied in the mind of any man who can- 
not read the Bible and yet can take 
pleasure in reading only literature of the 
type of the colored supplement of the 
Sunday paper. Now, I am not speaking 
against the colored supplement of any 
paper in its place; but as a substitute for 
serious reading of the great Book, it re- 
presents a type of mind which it is gross 
flattery merely to call shallow. 

I do not ask you to accept the word 
of those who preach the Bible as an 
inspired book; I make my appeal not 

73 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

only to professing Christians; I make it 
to every man who seeks after a high 
and useful life, to every man v/ho seeks 
the inspiration of religion, or who en- 
deavors to make his life conform to a 
high ethical standard; to every man 
who, be he Jew or Gentile, whatever his 
form of religious belief, whatever creed 
he may profess, faces life with the real 
desire not only to get out of it what is 
best, but to do his part in everything 
that tells for the ennobling and uplifting 
of humanity. 

I am making a plea, not only for the 
training of the mind, but for the moral 
and spiritual training of the home and 
the church, the moral and spiritual train- 
ing that has always been found in, and 
has ever accompanied, the study of the 
book which in almost every civilized 
tongue, and in many an uncivilized, can 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

be described as "the Book" with the cer- 
tainty of having the description under- 
stood by all listeners. A year and a 
quarter ago I was passing on foot 
through the native kingdom of Uganda, 
in Central Africa. Uganda is the most 
highly developed of the pure Negro 
states in Africa. It is the state which 
has given the richest return for mission- 
ary labor. It now contains some half- 
million of Christians, the direction of the 
government being in the hands of those 
Christians. I was interested to find that 
in their victorious fight against, in the 
first place, heathendom, and, in the next 
place, Moslemism, the native Christians 
belonging to the several different sects, 
both Catholics and Protestants, had 
had taken as their symbol "the Book," 
sinking all minor differences among 
themselves, and coming together on the 

75 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

common ground of their common belief 
in "the Book" that was the most pre- 
cious gift the white man had brought to 
them. 

It is of that book, and as testimony to 
its incalculable influence for good from 
the educational and moral standpoint, 
that the great scientist Huxley wrote in 
the following words : 

"Consider the great historical fact 
that for three centuries this book has 
been woven into the life of all that is 
noblest and best in English history; 
that it has become the national epic of 
Britain; that it is written in the noblest 
and purest English and abounds in ex- 
quisite beauties of mere literary form; 
and, finally, that it forbids the veriest 
hind, who never left his village, to be 
ignorant of the existence of other coun- 
tries and other civilizations of a great 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

past stretching back to the furthest 
limits of the oldest nations in the world. 
By the study of what other book could 
children be so much humanized and 
made to feel that each figure in that vast 
historical procession fills, like them- 
selves, but a momentary space in the in- 
terval between the Eternities ?" 

I ask your attention to this when I 
plead for the training of children in the 
Bible. I am quoting, not a professed 
Christian, but a scientific man whose 
scientific judgment is thus expressed as 
to the value of Biblical training for the 
young. 

And again listen to what Huxley says 
as to the bearing of the Bible upon those 
who study the ills of our time with the 
hope of eventually remedying them: 

"The Bible has been the Magna 
Charta of the poor and of the oppressed. 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

Down to modern times no State has had 
a constitution in which the interests of 
the people are so largely taken into ac- 
count, in which the duties so much more 
than the privileges of rulers are insisted 
upon, as that drawn up for Israel in 
Deuteronomy and in Leviticus; nowhere 
is the fundamental truth that the wel- 
fare of the State in the long run depends 
upon the righteousness of the citizen so 
strongly laid down. . . . The Bible is the 
most democratic book in the world." 

This is the judgment of Huxley, one 
of the greatest scientific thinkers of the 
last century, I ask you to train children 
in the Bible. Never commit the awful 
error of training the child by making 
him learn verses of the Bible as a punish- 
ment. I remember once calling upon a 
very good woman and finding one of her 
small sons, with a face of black injury, 

78 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

studying the Bible, and this very good 
woman said to me with pride, "Johnny 
has been bad, and he is learning a chap- 
ter of Isaiah by heart." I could not 
refrain from saying, "My dear madam, 
how can you do such a dreadful thing 
as to make the unfortunate Johnny as- 
sociate for the rest of his life the noble 
and beautiful poetry and prophecy of 
Isaiah with an excessively disagreeable 
task? You are committing a greater 
wrong against him than any he has him- 
self committed. " Punish the children in 
any other way than is necessary; but do 
not make them look upon the Bible with 
suspicion and dislike as an instrument of 
torture, so that they feel that it is a pain 
to have to read it, instead of, as it ought 
to be, a privilege and pleasure to read it. 
In reading the Bible and the beautiful 
Bible stories that have delighted child- 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

hood for so many generations, my own 
preference is to read them from the 
Bible and not as explained even in other- 
wise perfectly nice little books. Read 
these majestic and simple stories with 
whatever explanation is necessary to 
make the child understand the words; 
and then the story he will understand 
without difficulty. 

Of course we must not forget to give 
whatever explanation is necessary to en- 
able the child to understand the words. 
I think every father and mother comes 
to realize how queerly the little brains 
will accept new words at times. I re- 
member an incident of the kind in con- 
nection with a clergyman to whose 
church I went when a very small boy. 
It was a big Presbyterian church in 
Madison Square, New York; any New 
Yorker of my age who happens to be 

80 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

present here will probably recollect the 
church. We had a clergyman one of 
the finest men that I had ever met, one 
of the very, very rare men to whom it 
would be no misuse of words to describe 
as saintly. He was very fond of one of 
his little grandsons. This little grand- 
son showed an entire willingness to 
come to church and to Sunday-school 
when there were plenty of people pres- 
ent; but it was discovered that he was 
most reluctant to go anywhere near the 
church when there were not people 
there. As often happens with a child 
(every mother knows how difficult it 
often is to find out just what the little 
mind is thinking), his parents could not 
find out for some time what was the 
matter with the little boy or what he 
was afraid of in the church. Finally, 
Dr. Adams, the clergyman, started down 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

to the church and asked his little grand- 
son to come with him. After a little 
hesitation the small boy said yes, if his 
grandfather were coming, he would go. 
They got inside the church and walked 
down the aisle, their footsteps echoing 
in the empty church. The little fellow 
trotted alongside his grandfather, look- 
ing with half-frightened eagerness on 
every side. Soon he said, "Grandfather, 
where is the Zeal?" The grandfather, 
much puzzled, responded, "Where is 
what?" "Where is the Zeal?" repeated 
the little boy. The grandfather said, 
"I don't know what you mean; what are 
you talking of?" "Why, grandfather, 
don't you know? 'The zeal of thine 
house hath eaten me up' !" Now that 
little fellow had been rendered pro- 
foundly uncomfortable and very sus- 
picious of the church because he had 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

read this statement, had accepted it in 
literal fashion, and concluded there was 
some kind of fearful beast dwelling in 
the church, as to which it behooved him 
to be on his guard. 

It would be a great misfortune for our 
people if they ever lost the Bible as one 
of their habitual standards and guides in 
morality. In addressing this body, 
which must contain representatives of 
many different creeds, I ask you men 
and women to treat the Bible in the only 
way in which it can be treated if benefit 
is to be obtained from it, and that is, as 
a guide to conduct. I make no pretense 
to speak to you on dogmatic theology — 
there are probably scores of different 
views of dogma here represented. There 
are scores of different ways leading to- 
ward the same goal; but there is one test 
which we have a right to apply to the 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

professors of all the creeds — the test of 
conduct. More and more, people who 
possess either religious belief or aspira- 
tion after religious belief are growing to 
demand conduct as the ultimate test of 
the worth of the belief. I hope that 
after what I have said no man can sus- 
pect me of failure rightly to estimate the 
enormous influence that study of the 
Bible should have on our lives; but I 
would rather not see a man study it at 
all than have him read it as a fetish on 
Sunday and disregard its teachings on 
all other days of the week; because, evil 
though we think the conduct of the man 
who disregards its teachings on week 
days, it is still worse if that conduct is 
tainted with the mean vice of hypocrisy. 
The measure of our respect for and be- 
lief in the man and the woman who do 
try to shape their lives by the highest 

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The Bible and the Life of the People 

ethical standards inculcated in the 
Scriptures must in large part be also the 
measure of our contempt for those who 
ostentatiously read the Bible and then 
disregard its teachings in their dealings 
with their fellow-men. 

I do not like the thief, big or little; I 
do not like him in business and I do not 
like him in politics; but I dislike him 
most when, to shield himself from the 
effects of his wrong-doing, he claims 
that, after all, he is a "religious man." 
He is not a religious man, save in the 
sense that the Pharisee was a religious 
man in the time of the Saviour. The 
man who advances the fact that he goes 
to church and reads the Bible, as an off- 
set to the fact that he has acted like a 
scoundrel in his public or private rela- 
tions, only writes his own condemnation 
in larger letters than before. And so 

85 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

a man or a woman who reads and quotes 
the Bible as a warrant and an excuse for 
hardheartedness and uncharitableness 
and lack of mercy to friend or neighbor 
is reading and quoting the Bible to his 
or her own damage, perhaps to his or 
her own destruction. Let the man who 
goes to church, who reads the Bible, feel 
that it is peculiarly incumbent upon him 
so to lead his life in the face of the world 
that no discredit shall be brought upon 
the creed he professes, that no discredit 
shall attach to the book in accordance 
with which he asserts that he leads his 
own life. Sometimes I have seen — all 
of you have seen — the appeal made to 
stand by a man who has done evil, on the 
ground that he is a pillar of the church. 
Such a man is a rotten pillar of any 
church. And the professors of any 
creed, the men belonging to any churchy 

86 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

should be more jealous than any out- 
sider in holding such a man to account, 
in demanding that his practice shall 
square with the high professions of be- 
lief. Such a man sins not only against 
the moral law, sins not only against the 
community as a whole, but sins, above 
all, against his own church, against all 
who profess religion, against all who be- 
long to churches, because he by his life 
gives point to the sneer of the cynic who 
disbelieves in all application of Christian 
ethics to life, and who tries to make the 
ordinary man distrust church people as 
hypocrites. Whenever any church mem- 
ber is guilty of business dishonesty or 
political dishonesty or offenses against 
the moral law in any way, those who are 
members of churches should feel a far 
greater regret and disappointment than 
those who are not members. They can- 

87 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

not afford for one moment to let it be 
supposed that they exact from the at- 
tenders at church any less strict obser- 
vance of the moral law than if they did 
not attend church. They cannot af- 
ford to let the outside world even for a 
moment think that they accept church- 
going and Bible-readers as substitutes 
for, instead of incitements toward, lead- 
ing a higher and better and more useful 
life. We must strive each of us so to 
conduct our own lives as to be, to a 
certain extent at least, our brother's 
keeper. We must show that we actually 
do take into our own souls the teachings 
that we read; that we apply to ourselves 
the Gospel teaching that a corrupt tree 
cannot bring forth good fruit, and that 
the sound tree must prove its soundness 
by the fruit it brings forth; that we ap- 
ply to ourselves the teachings of the 

88 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

epistle wherein we are warned to be 
doers of the world and not hearers only. 
I have asked you to read the Bible for 
the beautiful English and for the history 
it teaches, as well as for the grasp it 
gives you upon the proper purpose of 
mankind. Of course if you read it only 
for aesthetic purposes, if you read it 
without thought of following its ethical 
teachings, then you are apt to do but 
little good to your fellow-men; for if 
you regard the reading of it as an intel- 
lectual diversion only, and, above all, if 
you regard this reading simply as an 
outward token of Sunday respectability, 
small will be the good that you yourself 
get from it. Our success in striving to 
help our fellow-men, and therefore to 
help ourselves, depends largely upon our 
success as we strive, with whatever 
shortcomings, with whatever failures, to 

89 



The Bible and the Life of the People 

lead our lives in accordance with the 
great ethical principles laid down in the 
life of Christ, and in the New Testament 
writings which seek to expound and ap- 
ply his teachings. 



90 



THE PUBLIC SERVANT AND THE 
EIGHTH COMMANDMENT 

I am overcome more and more with 
your good nature in coming here. I 
learn a great deal more from you than 
you can possibly learn from me. 

Today I come to speak on the text 
"The Public Servant and the Eighth 
Commandment" and like some other 
preachers I do not intend to keep purely 
to that text. I chose the two titles I 
speak upon today and tomorrow because 
I wish to lay especial stress upon the 
prime virtue of the public servant and 
therefore the prime crime of the un- 
worthy public servant; and also upon 
the prime virtue and the corresponding 
prime crime of the man who writes 
about the public servant, the man of the 
newspaper press and magazines. With 
the latter I shall deal tomorrow. Today 

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The Public Servant and 



I wish to speak of the public servant. 
Because the first essential in a public 
man is honesty, I have chosen as my 
title the public servant and the eighth 
commandment; but I wish to speak of 
much more than the eighth command- 
ment in connection with the public ser- 
vant, and I wish to speak of the attitude 
of the public as well as of the attitude of 
its servant. 

There used to be in the army an old 
proverb that there were no bad regi- 
ments, but plenty of bad colonels. So 
in private life I have grown to believe 
that if you always find bad servants in 
a household you want to look out for the 
mistress. I wonder if you grasp just 
what I mean by that? If you always 
find bad public servants, look out for the 
public! We here — you my hearers and 
I — live in a government where we are 

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the Eighth Commandment 

the people and in consequence where we 
are not to be excused if the government 
goes wrong. There are many countries 
where the government can be very 
wrong indeed and where nevertheless it 
can be said that the people are funda- 
mentally right, for they don't choose 
their public servants, they don't choose 
their government. On the contrary we 
do choose our government, not tempor- 
arily but permanently, and in the long 
run our public servants must necessarily 
be what we choose to have them. They 
represent us; they must represent our 
self-restraint and sense of decency and 
common sense, or else, our folly, our 
wickedness, or at least our supine indif- 
ference in letting others do the work of 
government for us. Not only should we 
have the right type of public servants, 
but we should remember that the wrong 

93 



The Public Servant and 



type discredits not only the man himself 
but each of us whose servant he is. 
Sometimes I hear our countrymen in- 
veigh against politicians; I hear our 
countrymen abroad saying, "Oh, you 
mustn't judge us by our politicians. " I 
always want to interrupt and answer, 
"you must judge us by our politicians. " 
We pretend to be the masters — we, the 
people — and if we permit ourselves to be 
ill served, to be served by corrupt and 
incompetent and inefficient men, then 
on our own heads must the blame rest. 

The other day I spoke to you of the 
prime need of having each man act the 
good citizen first in his own home, and 
I added that unless he did, he could not 
be a good citizen. But that is not 
enough. In addition the man must do 
his part, not merely in the election of 
candidates, but in creating the kind of 

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the Eighth Commandment 

atmosphere which will make the public 
man unwilling to do wrong, and espe- 
cially unwilling to permit wrong in its 
grosser forms. 

I began my education early, imme- 
diately after leaving college; for about 
that time I first began to spend a good 
deal of my time west of the Mississippi, 
and I also went into the New York legis- 
lature, a by no means wholly arcadian 
body. It is a little difficult to persuade 
me that politically we are growing 
worse. I do not think so. I thing that 
politically we have grown a little better 
during the thirty years that I have 
watched politics close at hand. We have 
slipped back, now and then, we have 
had trouble of every kind — local disturb- 
ances — yet on the whole I believe we 
have grown better and not worse; but 
there is still ample room for improve- 
ment! 

95 



The Public Servant and 



One of the first things that struck me 
in the legislature was the amount of 
downright corruption that I saw and the 
utter cynicism with which many of the 
men who practiced the corruption spoke 
of it. The next thing that struck me, 
as I grew better acquainted with politi- 
cal conditions, was the difficulty in 
arousing the public to an attitude of hos- 
tility towards that corruption. This 
was largely because the public declined 
to be awakened unless they thought the 
corruption was directly exercised at 
their own expense; in other words, it 
availed little to go into a district and say 
"look at that man's votes on such and 
such questions, they show that he isn't 
a straight man," unless the people of the 
district believed that their own interest 
was involved in one of the questions 
upon which the man had voted wrong. 

96 



the Eighth Commandment 

For instance, there were in the legisla- 
ture at that time many country members 
who were scrupulous to do right, or at 
least to appear to do right, on the small- 
est questions affecting their own dis- 
tricts, but who would go very far wrong 
indeed when the question was one in- 
volving some interest in New York City; 
for they trusted to the fact that their 
people did not care how they voted on 
New York City matters as long as they 
kept straight on matters immediately 
affecting the constituents themselves. 
Naturally men who held such a stand- 
ard were certain when they got into 
higher offices to be false to their trust. 
You cannot have unilateral honesty. 
The minute that a man is dishonest 
along certain lines, even though he pre- 
tends to be honest along other lines, you 
can be sure that it is only a pretense, it 

97 



The Public Servant and 



is only expediency; and you cannot trust 
to the mere sense of expediency to hold 
a man straight under heavy pressure. I 
very early made up my mind that it was 
a detriment to the public to have in pub- 
lic life any man whose attitude was 
merely that he would be as honest as the 
law made it necessary for him to be. 
The kind of honesty which essentially 
consists merely in too great acuteness to 
get into jail is a mighty poor type of 
honesty upon which to rely; because, up 
near the border line between what can 
and what can not be punished by law, 
there come many occasions when the 
man can defile the public service, can 
defy the public conscience, can in spirit 
be false to his oath, and yet technically 
keep his skirts clear. When I say that 
the prime need is that the public servant 
shall obey the eighth commandment I 

98 



the Eighth Commandment 



do not mean merely that he shall keep 
himself in such shape that a clever law- 
yer can get him off if he is charged with 
theft. I mean that he shall be honest 
intensively and extensively. I mean 
that he shall act with the same fine sense 
of honor toward the public and on be- 
half of the public that we expect to be 
shown by those neighbors with whom 
we are willing to trust not only our 
money, but our good names. If you in- 
tend to trust a neighbor, the kind of 
neighbor whom you certainly will not 
choose is the man of whom it can only 
be said that you are quite sure you won't 
be able to get him in jail. The kind of 
mental acuteness that is shown merely 
by a thorough study of the best methods 
of escaping successful criminal proced- 
ure is not the kind of mental acuteness 
that you value in your friend, in the man 

99 



The Public Servant and 



with whom you have business relations; 
and it should be the last type of mental 
ability, the last type of moral attitude, 
which you tolerate in a public man. 

Perhaps the most dangerous of all 
public servants, however, is the public 
servant who gets into office by persuad- 
ing a section of the public that he will 
do something that is just a little bit 
crooked in their interest. I do not care 
in the least what section of the public is 
thus persuaded. I do not care whether 
it is the great corporation man who 
wishes to see a given individual made 
judge, or executive officer, or legislator, 
"because he is our man and he will look 
out for the rights of property/' or 
whether, on the other hand, it is the 
wage-worker, the laboring man, who 
supports some candidate because that 
candidate announces that he is "the 

100 



the Eighth Commandment 



friend of labor," although the man to 
whom the appeal is made ought to un- 
derstand also that the candidate is the 
foe of decency. Capitalist and wage- 
worker alike will do well to remember 
that their interests face to face with the 
public man are primarily as those affect- 
ing all good American citizens, and that 
whatever the temporary advantage may 
be, they irretrievably harm themselves 
and the children who are to come after 
them if they permit themselves to be 
drawn into any other attitude. 

The capitalist who because he thinks 
it is the interest of his class to have in 
high office a corrupt man who will serve 
his class interest is laying up for himself 
and for his children a day of terrible 
retribution; for if that type of capitalist 
has his way long enough he will per- 
suade the whole community that the in- 

101 



The Public Servant and 



terest of the community is bound up in 
overthrowing every man in public office 
who serves property, even though he 
serves it honestly. The corrupt capital- 
ist may help himself for the moment, 
and he may be defended by others of his 
own class on grounds of expediency; but 
in the end he works fearful damage to 
his fellows. If a business man cannot 
run a given business except by bribing 
or by submitting to blackmail let him 
get out of it and into some other busi- 
ness. If he cannot run his business save 
on condition of doing things which can 
only be done in the darkness, then let 
him enter into some totally different 
field of activity. The test is easy. Let 
him ask whether he is afraid anything 
will be found out or not. If he is not, 
he is all right; if he is, he is all wrong. 
So much for the capitalist. 

102 



the Eighth Commandment 



Let the wage-worker in his turn re- 
member that the candidate for public 
office who appeals for his support upon 
the ground that he will condone lawless 
violence, that he will look the other way 
when violence is perpetrated, that he 
will recognize the rules of a labor organ- 
ization of any kind as standing above 
the Constitution and the laws of his 
country, let the laboring man remember 
that if he supports such a candidate he 
in his turn is doing his best to bring 
about a condition of things where de- 
mocracy would come to an end, where 
self-rule would come to an end. Let the 
capitalist remember that he had better 
be most shocked at the deeds of his own 
class, and not at the misdeeds of the men 
of another class. And let the laboring 
man remember in his turn that the foe 
against whom he should most carefully 

103 



The Public Servant and 



guard is the corrupt labor man, the 
labor candidate who preaches violence, 
envy, class hatred. That is the kind of 
man who most jeopards the welfare of 
the wageworker, just as the successful 
corruptionist, the capitalist who has 
reached a high position in the financial 
world by the practice of acts that will 
not bear the light of day, is really the 
worst foe of the very property classes 
that are sometimes so misguided as to 
rally to his defense when he is attacked. 
I shall tell you one story: In the old 
days I used to have a cow ranch in the 
short grass country. At that time there 
were no fences within a thousand miles 
of it. If a calf was passed by on the 
roundup so that next year when it was 
a yearling and was not following any 
cow it was unbranded, it was called a 
maverick. It was range custom or range 

104 



the Eighth Commandment 



law that if a maverick were found on any 
range the man finding it would put on 
the brand of that range. One day I had 
hired a new cow-puncher, and when he 
and I were riding we struck a maverick. 
It was on a neighbor's range, the Thistle 
Range. The puncher roped and threw 
the maverick; we built a little fire of 
sage-brush, and took out the cinch iron 
and heated it to run on the brand. When 
he started to run on the brand I said to 
him "the Thistle brand"; he answered, 
"that's all right, boss, I know my busi- 
ness." In a minute I said "hold on, 
you're putting on my brand"; to which 
he answered "Yes, I always put on the 
boss's brand." I said "Oh, well, you go 
back to the house and get your time." 
He rose, saying "What's that for, I was 
putting on your brand"; and I closed 
the conversation with the remark "Yes, 

105 



The Public Servant and 



my friend, and if you will steal for me 
you will steal from me." That applies 
in lots of occupations besides those of 
the cow punchers. Nowhere does it 
apply more clearly than in public life. 

One of the pains of our development 
as a people has been the tendency to 
deify what is called "smartness," mean- 
ing by smartness adroitness and skill 
unaccompanied by any scruple in con- 
nection with the observance of a moral 
law. We have all of us heard — I have 
heard it in the West as well as in the 
East — some man alluded to as an awful 
scoundrel, and another person replying 
"Oh yes, perhaps he ain't quite straight, 
but I tell you, that fellow is smart !" You 
must yourselves have heard at times this 
kind of statement made about some 
scoundrel whom you could not under- 
stand decent men supporting; and the 

106 



the Eighth Commandment 



statement is acted upon by many little 
men, and by many big men, both in 
business life and in political life. Well, 
we shall never reach the proper standard 
in public service or in private conduct 
until we have a public opinion so 
aroused, so resolute, so intelligent, that 
it shall be understood that we are more 
bitter against the scoundrel that suc- 
ceeds than against the scoundrel that 
fails. 

The other day I noticed a brief state- 
ment made by a certain Senator, which, 
as far as I have seen, has not been com- 
mented on at all, but which struck me as 
highly significant. The Senator in 
question had been defending Mr. Lori- 
mer, and in alluding to some of the men 
who had testified that they had been 
bribed to vote for the Illinois Senator, 
he quite casually remarked that in his 

107 



The Public Servant and 



experience a knave was always a fool. 
His idea was that no very high grade 
intelligence was ever found in a knave. 
The Senator was entirely wrong. The 
knave that fails is usually a fool, but the 
knave that succeeds may be a very intel- 
ligent man, and his intelligence when 
unaccompanied by any trace of moral 
instinct, merely makes him infinitely the 
most dangerous man that this commu- 
nity can bring forth; and the Senator in 
the remark he made came dangerously 
near assuming the very dangerous posi- 
tion that a knave who is sufficiently able 
is therefore relieved from the odium of 
knavery. 

We ought to admire intelligence and 
ability; but only when the intelligence 
and ability are controlled and guided by 
the will to do right. Intelligence and 
ability divorced from the moral instinct 

108 



the Eighth Commandment 

merely make the man an infinitely dan- 
gerous wild beast whom it is our busi- 
ness to hunt out of the political life, and, 
so far as we can, out of the business life, 
of the community. 

It has been finely said that the su- 
preme task of humanity is to subordi- 
nate the whole fabric of civilization to 
the service of the soul. This does not 
mean that we are to neglect the things 
of the body. It means that we are to 
treat the welfare of the body as neces- 
sary, as a good in itself; but still more 
as a good because upon that welfare we 
can build the higher welfare of the soul. 
There is a soul in the community, a soul 
in the nation, just exactly as there is a 
soul in the individual; and exactly as the 
individual hopelessly mars himself if he 
lets his conscience be dulled by the con- 
stant repetition of unworthy acts, so the 

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The Public Servant and 



nation will hopelessly blunt the popular 
conscience if it permits its public men 
continually to do acts which the nation 
in its heart of hearts knows are acts that 
cast discredit upon our whole public life. 
It is an old and a trite saying that our 
actions have more effect upon our prin- 
ciples than our principles upon our ac- 
tions. I remember some time ago out 
on the range listening to a fine old fellow 
speaking to his nephew who was a fine 
young man, but nervous in his strange 
surroundings, and entirely unaccus- 
tomed to horses. The young fellow had 
asked his uncle how he could grow fear- 
less in handling horses, because, he said, 
he was sure that if he only could get so 
that he would not be afraid of them he 
could handle them all right. The old 
uncle responded, "Now, I'll tell you, you 
go ahead and handle them as if you were 

no 



the Eighth Commandment 

not afraid of them and gradually you 
will stop being afraid of them." In other 
words, the boy could not afford to wait 
until he stopped being afraid of the 
horse before he rode it. He had to ride 
until he stopped being afraid of it. He 
had to get the habit of not being afraid 
of it, and when once he had acquired the 
habit of riding as if he were not afraid, 
all cause for worry disappeared and 
gradually all fear itself disappeared. It 
is just the same way in public life. If 
you habitually suffer your public repre- 
sentatives to be dishonest you will grad- 
ually lose all power of insisting upon 
honesty. If you let them continually 
do little acts that are not quite straight 
you will gradually induce in their minds 
the mental attitude which will make it 
hopeless to get from them anything that 
is not crooked. If in this state, in Cali- 

111 



The Public Servant and 



fornia, or in New York, you for a gen- 
eration permit big corporations to pur- 
chase favors to which they are not en- 
titled you will breed up a race of public 
men and business men who accept that 
condition of things as normal. And 
then, my friends, when you finally wake 
up I wish you would remember that 
great though their blame may be your 
blame is even greater for having per- 
mitted such a condition of things to 
arise. 

When the awakening comes, you will 
undoubtedly have to change the ma- 
chinery of the law in order to meet the 
conditions that have become so bad, but 
do not forget that no nation was ever 
yet saved by governmental machinery 
alone. You must have the right kind 
of law; but the best law that the wit of 
man can devise will amount to nothing 

112 



the Eighth Commandment 

if you have not the right kind of spirit 
in the man behind the law. And again, 
friends, when you finally revolt, as re- 
volt you will and must against being 
ruled by corporations, and when you 
assume the power over them, then is the 
time to remember that it is your duty to 
be honest to them just as much as to 
exact honesty from them; and that if 
you are guilty of the folly and iniquity 
of doing wrong at their expense, you 
have not made a step in advance, even 
though you have stopped them from 
doing wrong at your expense. You 
must demand honesty or you are not 
men; and you must do honesty or you 
are not decent men. 

Sometimes I have been asked as to 
why I draw the distinction in need of 
governmental action between the big 
business corporation and the smaller 

113 



The Public Servant and 



corporation. I think it is perfectly 
clear. Each one of us deals in his do- 
mestic relations with a number of differ- 
ent men, the grocer, the dry goods mer- 
chant, the carpenter, the butcher, the 
baker, and a number of others. Now, 
we do not need any governmental help 
in dealing with those men, because they 
are about our size. If the grocer doesn't 
give you the proper kind of goods you 
will change the grocer, and if you don't 
pay the grocer he will change you. But 
if the grocer becomes — I use the tech- 
nical terminology — a captain of indus- 
try and accumulates a great fortune and 
joins with other men of the same type 
in a great business — a great railroad, a 
great oil or coal company, I don't care 
what it is — then they create a mighty 
artificial entity called a corporation, and 
no one of us individually can deal satis- 

114 



the Eighth Commandment 

factorily with that corporation because 
we are dealing with an entity that is 
not our size. You can change the gro- 
cer if he serves you ill; but if you live 
along the line of the only railway in the 
country and wish to ship goods you 
must ship them on the railway's terms 
or not ship them at all. That is the only 
alternative. If you are dealing with a 
big corporation that controls all the pro- 
ducts of an industry or if you are work- 
ing for that corporation, you must ac- 
cept what it gives or accept nothing. 
The situation is reversed from what it 
was previously. Therefore it becomes 
necessary to replace our individual 
strength by the strength of all of us col- 
lectively, so that we may have to repres- 
ent us an artificial entity as big as the 
corporation. If the corporation works 
only inside a state, why then this entity 

115 



The Public Servant and 



must be the state government; if it 
works in a number of different states, 
then we invoke the only man big enough 
to deal with it — Uncle Sam. 

And now how shall Uncle Sam deal 
with it? Well, fundamentally just ex- 
actly as we deal with the grocer and the 
grocer with us. If we do not pay the 
grocer enough to give him a profit he 
will either have to abandon serving us 
or he will have to get out of business. 
He cannot run his business unless we 
pay him enough for him to make money. 
It is just the same with a big corpora- 
tion. If we insist upon making stipula- 
tions on behalf of the Government, on 
behalf of the people, such that the cor- 
poration cannot carry them out and give 
any money to those who have built it 
up, why either that corporation will quit 
business or at least no other corporation 

116 



the Eighth Commandment 

will go into business. On the other 
hand, if each householder here always 
pays all his bills without looking into 
them it does not show that he has a nice 
disposition, it shows that he is a fool. 
In the same way I want Uncle Sam to 
do scrupulous justice to the corporation, 
but I want him to say in return, now I 
want you to behave yourself, I have no 
doubt that you would like to behave 
yourself; but whether you would or 
would not, 1 will see that you do behave 
yourself. 

In the century which is now well open 
we shall have to use the legislative 
power of the state to make conditions 
better and more even as between man 
and man. Our aim must be to control 
the big corporation so that while it 
earns an ample reward upon its invest- 
ment it gives to the public in return an 

117 



The Public Servant and 



ample service for the reward it receives. 
More and more we must shape condi- 
tions so that each man shall have a fair 
chance in life; that so far as we can 
bring it about — I do not mean to say 
that we can bring it about absolutely but 
insofar as we can approximately bring 
it about — each man shall start in life 
on a measurable equality of opportunity 
with other men, unhelped by privilege 
himself, unhindered by privilege in 
others. Now understand me: I do not 
mean for a moment that we should try to 
bring about the impossible and undesir- 
able condition, of giving to all men 
equality of reward. As long as human 
nature is what it is there will be in- 
equality of service, and where there is 
inequality of service there ought to be 
inequality of reward. That is justice. 
Equal reward for unequal service is in- 

118 



the Eighth Commandment 

justice. All I am trying to help bring 
about is such a condition of affairs that 
there shall be measurable approximation 
to a higher reward than at present for 
the right kind of service, and a less re- 
ward than at present for some forms of 
activity that do not represent real ser- 
vice at all. There must be an oppor- 
tunity for each man to show the stuff 
that is in him. But in the last analysis 
he must help himself. Every one of us 
stumbles at times. There is not a man 
here who does not at times stumble; and 
when that is the case shame on his 
brother who will not stretch out a help- 
ing hand to him. Help him up; but 
when he has been helped up then it is 
his duty and business to walk for him- 
self. Help him up; but if he lies down, 
you cannot carry him. You will not do 
any good to him and you will interfere 

119 



The Public Servant and 



with your own usefulness to yourself 
and to others. 

Our whole governmental policy 
should be shaped to secure a more even 
justice as between man and man, and 
better conditions such as will permit 
each man to do the best there is in him. 
In other words, our governmental ideal 
is to secure as far as possible the even 
distribution of justice — using the word 
justice in its largest and finest sense. 
You cannot secure justice if you haven't 
just and upright public servants. You 
cannot secure great reforms if the foun- 
tain head from which the reforms are to 
come is corrupt. Our democracy in 
this our country now approximates the 
hundred million limit of population; our 
great democracy has great and complex 
needs; we need to have wise men, far- 
sighted men in public office, so that they 

120 



the Eighth Commandment 

may study those needs, and, so far as 
may be, meet them. But no wisdom in 
a public servant will avail if the public 
servant is not honest; and he will not 
be honest unless the public both de- 
mands and practices honesty. 

I plead for honesty in the public ser- 
vant, and I plead for it strongly. We 
need ability and intelligence to help us 
solve the problems with which as a 
nation we are face to face. We cannot 
solve them without ability, without in- 
telligence. But what we need most of 
all is honesty, honesty in our people and 
honesty in our representatives. And 
woe to us as a nation if we do not have 
the honesty, the uprightness, the desire 
to treat each man with wise and gener- 
ous and considerate justice. 

Last year I was in the Old World, and 
wherever I went I encountered two 

121 



The Public Servant and 



phases of feeling that seemed contradic- 
tory. In the first place, wherever I 
went I found the man who felt that he 
had been unjustly treated in life looking 
eagerly toward this country as a coun- 
try where the ideal of justice between 
man and man had been at least partially 
realized. And everywhere I went 1 
found also, oh, my friends, a very differ- 
ent feeling, a feeling of doubt and mis- 
trust among our friends and admirers 
because of what they had heard of our 
lack of integrity and honesty in public 
and in business affairs. I wish that our 
people could realize that every time 
word is sent abroad of political or busi- 
ness corruption or mob violence in this 
country, it saddens the heart of all be- 
lievers in popular government, every- 
where; and it is a subject for sneering 
mirth to every reactionary, to every man 
who disbelieves that the people can 

122 



the Eighth Commandment 

control themselves and do justice both 
to themselves and to others. I do not 
suppose that if we come short in our 
duty, if we are uninfluenced by the ap- 
peal made to us for our own sakes and 
for the sake of our children, we can be 
moved by an appeal made for other peo- 
ple. Yet I believe that every man who 
has the inestimable privilege of living 
here in our free land should feel in his 
soul, deep in the marrow of his being, 
that not only are we bound to act justly 
and honorably and honestly as a nation 
for our own sakes, not only are we 
bound so to act for the sake of the chil- 
dren who are to come after us, but that 
we are also bound thus to act because 
all over the world the peoples are look- 
ing eagerly at this great experiment in 
popular government; and shame to us, 
woe to us, if our conduct dims the golden 
hope of the nations of mankind. 

123 



THE SHAPING OF PUBLIC OPIN- 
ION AND THE NINTH COM- 
MANDMENT 

Today in making my last speech to 
you I wish to thank you from my heart 
for the way in which you have listened 
to me. 

It had not occurred to me that people 
would come in numbers sufficient to fill 
every corner of this theatre. You have 
made me both very grateful and a little 
embarassed. You have made me feel 
more than a little humble; because each 
time I saw the audience I was afraid 
that they would go away feeling that 
they had not received just what they 
had a right to expect; because, friends, 
after all, the message I have to give to 
you is so very simple, and its worth de- 
pends so purely upon the spirit in which 
I give it and you take it. 

124 



and the Ninth Commandment 

What I have to say amounts to ab- 
solutely nothing if it does not represent 
at least an honest effort on my part to 
live up to what I preach, and if it does 
not represent a purpose on your part to 
act on whatever of my words you think 
it worth while to applaud. Of course, 
what I have to say is simple because the 
great facts of life are simple; and I am 
speaking to you, my fellow citizens, my 
fellow Americans, whom I trust and in 
whom I believe, about the elemental 
needs that are common to all of us, and 
vital to all of us. 

A cultivated and intellectual paper 
once complained that my speeches 
lacked subtlety. So they do! I think 
that the command or entreaty to clean 
living and decent politics should no 
more be subtle than a command in battle 
should be subtle. You veterans, over 

125 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

there, what you wanted to have your 
officer say, when in a tight place was 
"Come on, boys"; and it was no use his 
saying it unless he went himself. The 
most admirable address that could pos- 
sibly be delivered by an officer on the 
field would be hopelessly marred if im- 
mediately afterwards the officer went to 
the rear; and no heartiness of enthus- 
iasm on the part of the soldiers who 
listened to the address would atone if 
they then failed to go forward. 

The purpose of the command or the 
entreaty or the adjuration of the officer 
was to make his men go forward. The 
exact language that Sheridan used when 
he came back from Winchester and met 
his men going the wrong way matters 
little from the classical standpoint; the 
point was that after hearing it the men 
began to go the right way; and they 

126 



and the Ninth Commandment 

would not have gone the right way if 
he had not been going the right way 
himself. In war, and in peace also, 
words are of use only as they are trans- 
lated into deeds. 

All I have to say to you here is very 
simple; and yet it is all important. Any 
good that will come from it to you will 
come only if you really do think of what 
I have said, and then, if it agrees with 
your judgment, if you try to act a little 
closer to the right standard than hither- 
tofore you have been doing. And right 
here I want to say that you in your turn 
have put me under a bond of obligation; 
for after having spoken to you as I have 
spoken for these five days I realize that 
I must myself try to make my conduct 
square absolutely with my words and I 
realize also that I have more to learn 
than to teach. 

127 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

As I say, I would like you to test what 
I have to say by your own experiences. 
The first day I spoke of applied ethics, 
of realizable ideals. I spoke in favor of 
having a lofty ideal which could be lived 
up to. Let me apply what I have to say 
by instances taken from the Civil War, 
from the experience of the men in blue 
and the men in gray — for they are all 
brothers now. It was of no use for a 
man to enter the army if he was not 
actuated by a lofty ideal; unless he had 
the right kind of ideal of personal con- 
duct, unless he was ashamed to flinch, 
ashamed to disgrace himself in battle or 
on the march, then he was of no use in 
the army. It was necessary that he 
should have the right kind of ideal. But 
it was even more necessary that he 
should apply that ideal in practice. I do 
not care how lofty his theory of conduct 

128 



and the Ninth Commandment 

was, that theory was useless if when he 
heard the bullets he was unable to con- 
trol his tendency to run away. The 
soldier needed a lofty ideal, and he need- 
ed to apply that ideal. It had to be an 
ideal that he could measurably realize 
on the field of battle. It must be just 
so with us in civil life. We must have 
a lofty ideal of conduct; and we must 
strive to realize that ideal in practice. 
That was my first day's lecture. 

The tone of my second lecture was 
that the man must do well in his own 
home before he can do well outside; 
that the man must be a decent husband 
and father, decent in the performance 
of his duty toward those with whom he 
is most intimately brought into con- 
tact, before he can hope to amount to 
anything in the world at large. 

On the third day I spoke of what has 

129 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

been for many centuries the great guide 
to righteousness and clean living. 

Yesterday I spoke of the public man, 
of his cardinal virtue, honesty, and of 
the relations of the public to the public 
man. Let me again there take an ex- 
ample from the army. I spoke of the 
right feeling to have toward the success- 
ful man and of the right feeling for the 
individuals in the community to bear 
towards one another. They are just 
such feelings as the soldiers of the Civil 
war bore to their chiefs and to one 
another. No soldier worth his salt 
grudged the preference, the honor, the 
reward that came to great Generals such 
as Grant and Sheridan and Sherman, 
such as Lee and Johnson and Stonewall 
Jackson. They not only did not grudge 
any reward that came to a man because 
he earned it, but they scorned the crea- 

130 



and the Ninth Commandment 

ture who did grudge such reward. It 
was not only a matter of justice, it was 
to their own interest to see the fighting 
General, the General who could carry on 
a campaign and fight a battle success- 
fully put high up. It was to the interest 
of the army and the country that that 
man should be rewarded. What the 
soldiers grudged was a reward coming 
to a man who had not earned it, a re- 
ward coming to a General, not because 
he was a first class General in the field, 
but because he had pulled wires in 
Washington, because he was so and so's 
friend and had such and such influences 
behind him, so that he was shoved up 
over the head of a better man. That 
type of promotion they grudged because 
that type of promotion was not earned 
by service. 

It is just so with us in private life and 

131 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

in public life. It is a scandal and a shame 
to grudge the reward that comes to the 
big man who earns a fortune by render- 
ing service to his fellows, service of such 
a kind that for every dollar he gets he 
has done at least a dollar's worth of 
good to someone else. It is to the in- 
terest of all of us to encourage that 
man. It is eminently to our interest, 
however, to discourage the man whose 
fortune represents not serving the pub- 
lic but swindling the public. And again 
it is to our interest to discourage the 
fortune that represents service, but ser- 
vice overpaid ten or one hundred times. 
So much for the men at the top. Now 
for the men in the ranks. What the 
soldier — whether he wore the uniform 
of the Northerner or the Southerner, 
whether he served in the Federal or in 
the Confederate armies — what the sol- 

132 



and the Ninth Commandment 

dier was concerned with knowing about 
his bunky, about the man who stood by 
him, who marched by him was not 
whether he was a banker or a bricklayer 
— he had no concern as to whether the 
comrade had much money or little, as 
to how he earned his livlihood, or how 
he worshipped his Creator — but only 
whether that man when an emergency 
came would "stay put/' When the 
fight came he did not wish to have to 
look over his shoulder to see if his com- 
rade was still there; he wished to be 
certain on that point, and to be able to 
devote his undivided attention to the 
enemy. In camp and on the march he 
wished to be sure that the man who was 
his comrade would not shirk part of the 
job. If this man acted up to the re- 
quirements of a good comrade, if he was 
a man to be trusted in battle and on the 

133 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

march, if he was a man who could be 
counted upon to do his part and a little 
more than his part in whatever emer- 
gency arose, then the soldier worth his 
salt, stood by his comrade and recog- 
nized in him a man entitled to be trusted 
in battle and on the march. If the com- 
rade was a man who could be counted 
upon to do his part, and a little more 
than his part, in whatever emergency 
arose, then the other stood by him and 
recognized in him a man entitled to 
every demand that comradeship could 
exact. 

It should be just so in civil life. Shame 
to our people if they ever come to pay 
loyalty to cast or class ahead of loyalty 
to good citizenship. I have no patience 
with the man, whether a multi-million- 
aire or a wage-worker, whether the 
member of a big corporation or the 

134 



and the Ninth Commandment 

member of a labor union, who does not 
recognize the fact that as an American 
citizen his first loyalty is due to the 
nation, and to his fellow citizens no mat- 
ter what position they occupy as long as 
those fellow citizens are decent men. 
His first loyalty must be to the nation 
and to decency in citizenship. He can- 
not be a good citizen if he puts loyalty 
to any other organization above loyalty 
to the nation, if he puts loyalty to any 
class above loyalty to good citizenship 
as such. 

Having spoken yesterday of the pub- 
lic men and the eighth commandment 
today I speak about the disseminator of 
information to the public and the ninth 
commandment. 

' The public man occupies a very im- 
portant position, a very responsible posi- 
tion. He deserves cordial praise if he 

135 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 



does well, and the heartiest condemna- 
tion if he does badly. But after all, in 
a country like ours, where public opinion 
rules, he does not occupy quite so im- 
portant a position as the shaper of 
public opinion, that is, as the man who 
by speech or writing — especially in the 
magazines and newspapers — seeks to 
tell his countrymen what the facts are 
about public and private questions, 
about public and private men. 

The cardinal sin of the public man is 
theft. The cardinal sin of the public 
writer is mendacity. I abhor a thief, 
and I abhor a liar as much as I abhor a 
thief. I abhor the assassin who tries to 
kill a man; I abhor almost equally the 
assassin of that man's character. The 
infamy of the creature who tries to as- 
sassinate an upright and honest public 
servant doing his duty is no greater thart 

136 



and the Ninth Commandment 

the infamy of the creature who tries to 
assassinate an honest man's character, 
and who irretrievably damages the pub- 
lic by destroying their faith in the man 
who should have their confidence, and 
mind you, when I speak of the wrong 
done by this type of slanderous perverter 
of truth, I wish to dwell upon the fact 
that I am not concerned primarily with 
the wrong done to the man whom he 
slanders. That is bad enough; but my 
chief concern is the wrong he does to 
the public whom he teaches to think 
crookedly. 

The newspaper man or writer in a 
magazine who sustains the crook shares 
the crook's guilt. The newspaper which 
upholds the briber, the corrupter of leg- 
islators, the man who buys a seat in a 
legislative body, or buys an executive 
position — the newspaper man who up- 

137 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

holds the crooked judge, the crooked 
legislator or executive officer, who up- 
holds the public servant who betrays his 
duty, that newspaper writer or magazine 
writer is himself as guilty morally as the 
man whom he defends. No more praise- 
worthy, no more indespensible service 
can be rendered than that of the man 
who truthfully and fearlessly exposes 
corruption in the high places of political 
and business life. But remember also 
that the converse is true. Evil though 
dishonesty is, it is hardly worse than 
false accusation of dishonesty against 
the honest man. I am speaking only 
from the standpoint of the honest man 
who is falsely accused. The honest man 
of strength and courage is probably fair- 
ly well able to take care of himself. 
If the honest man is fit for public life 
he will have a fairly thick skin and will 

138 



and the Ninth Commandment 

view with a certain grim contempt the 
accusations of the men who, we know, 
have either been bought to accuse him 
or are earning their livelihood in the 
lowest and meanest of all ways, by the 
practice of mendacity for hire — and in- 
cidentally, the offense is just as great 
if they lie to gratify the spirit of sensa- 
tionalism as if they lie because they are 
bought. 

Muckrakers who rake up much that 
ought to be raked up deserve well of the 
community and the magazines and 
newspapers who publish their writings 
do a public service. But they must 
write the truth and the service they do 
must be real. The type of magazine 
which I condemn is what may be called 
the Ananias muckraker type. No paper 
bought and owned by the special inter- 
ests can be viler, or can play a more con- 

139 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

temptible part in American politics, than 
the Ananias muckraker type of maga- 
zine, the type of magazine where the 
proprietor, editor and writer seek to earn 
their livelihood by telling what they 
know to be scandalous falsehoods about 
honest men. No boodling Alderman, 
no convicted private or public thief serv- 
ing his term in stripes in the penitentiary 
is a baser and more degraded being than 
the writers of whom I speak. And they 
render this ill service, this worst of bad 
services to the public; they confuse the 
mind of the public as between honest 
and dishonest men. Every time that 
an honest man is falsely accused of dis- 
honesty you give heart to every rogue. 
There is nothing that a dishonest man 
revels in more than a false accusation 
against his honest compeers; for if you 
attack enough honest men with suffi- 

140 



and the Ninth Commandment 

cient violence you finally utterly confuse 
the public mind, you make the average 
decent citizen wholly unable to tell the 
true attack from the false, the honest 
public servant from the dishonest public 
servant; and in the end you get him to 
believe that the white men are not white 
and that the black men are not black, 
but that they are all gray, and that it 
does not make much difference which of 
them you support. 

Such a feeling is absolutely fatal to 
the achievement of good citizenship. If 
you once get the public so thoroughly 
confused and disheartened and skeptical 
that on the one hand it does not believe 
that any man is good, and on the other 
hand tends to excuse every bad man on 
the ground "Oh, well, I guess he's no 
worse than the rest, they are all pretty 
bad;" if you once get the public in such 

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The Shaping of Public Opinion 

a frame of mind you have done more 
than can be done in any other way to- 
wards ruining our citizenship, towards 
ruining popular and governmental hon- 
esty and efficiency. 

I hope and believe that, as the people 
at large more and more take into their 
own hands the shaping of legislation, 
and try to shape legislation directly, 
they will recognize the fact that the man 
who poisons their minds is as thor- 
oughly reprehensible a scoundrel — and 
when I say scoundrel I am speaking 
with scientific precision and with moder- 
ation — as the man who poisons their 
bodies. 

President Wheeler alluded to the fact 
that I had been able to get through the 
Pure Food Law. It was one of the 
achievements during my administration 
of which I felt we all had a right to be 

142 



and the Ninth Commandment 

proud. We got it through in the teeth 
of the opposition of the multitude of 
men who were making fortunes by the 
sale of adulterated foods, and who owed 
much of their wealth to the fact that in 
the absence of law they could sell their 
goods by a label which did not corres- 
pond to the contents of the package. We 
had to face the opposition not only of 
the men in that business themselves but 
of the newspapers and the magazines 
which did the advertising for that kind 
of business; and the opposition was so 
powerful that it was six years before I 
was able to secure the passage of a law 
which gave us a reasonable chance to see 
that if food was bought for a baby the 
food was not poisoned. 

Now I hope in the end to see legisla- 
tion which will punish the circulation of 
untruth, and above all of slanderous un- 

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The Shaping of Public Opinion 

truth, in a newspaper or magazine 
meant to be read by the public; which 
will punish such action as severely as we 
punish the introduction into commerce 
of adulterated food falsely described and 
meant to be eaten by the public. 

At present men sufficiently wealthy 
to pay for slander and libel and the other 
men wishing to earn a base livelihood by 
pandering to the taste of those who like 
to read slander and libel can undoubt- 
edly do an enormous quantity of damage 
to the upright public servant. But keep 
in mind that I am not concerned with 
him; I am speaking from the standpoint 
of the public. The enormous damage, the 
incredible damage, is done to the public, 
by completely misinforming them as to 
the character of the decent public ser- 
vant, and also misinforming them as to 
the character of that man in public life 

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and the Ninth Commandment 

who is an unworthy public servant. I 
will give you an example out of my own 
personal experience during the last three 
years to show the kind of conduct with 
which we have to reckon on the part of 
some of the newspapers. 

One of the papers of notoriety in New 
York is the "New York Herald;" it is 
published by Mr. James Gordon Ben- 
nett. Whatever distinction it has is im- 
plied in its being the founder, the begin- 
ner, of the school of purely sensational 
yellow journalism in New York. Mr. 
James Gordon Bennett was born in 
America. He possesses one redeeming 
characteristic, he lives abroad; he lives 
in Paris. While I was President and 
while I had as District Attorney in New 
York a man named Harry Stimson — 
one of the best public servants in the 
country — all kinds of cases of very great 

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The Shaping of Public Opinion 

importance came up for action in his 
district. I put Harry Stimson in as 
District Attorney because I knew we 
would have to take action against a 
number of very powerful corporations 
and individuals, who would have at their 
command the very best legal talent that 
money could get. I wanted to be sure 
that when the trial day came Uncle 
Sam's man would be just as good as the 
men against him. 

We did various things. You may re- 
collect that about eight years ago they 
used to say that you couldn't put a rich 
man in the penitentiary. Well, we put 
several rich men in the penitentiary. 
Harry Stimson put the wealthy man, 
Morse, in the penitentiary. He brought 
to a successful conclusion the proceed- 
ings against the Sugar Trust, partly for 
rebates and partly for swindling the 

146 



and the Ninth Commandment 

United States Government by debauch- 
ing Custom House employees; he re- 
covered, and had paid into the United 
States Treasury, between two and three 
millions of dollars in fines from the 
Sugar Trust for its misconduct. (It is 
perhaps unnecessary to add that when 
Stimson ran for Governor last year the 
Sugar Trust and every kindred business 
organization in Wall Street stated that 
he was "unsafe for the business inter- 
ests"). He conducted several of such 
suits. Among other matters his atten- 
tion was brought to the fact that the 
"New York Herald" was carrying a "per- 
sonal" column of the vilest description. 
He sued in person James Gordon Ben- 
nett, the editor and proprietor of the 
"Herald" for violation of the law against 
circulating obscene literature through 
the mails. Mr. Bennett was living in 

147 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

Paris. As soon as it became evident 
that we intended to fight the suit to a 
conclusion it also became evident that 
we would obtain the verdict. Every ef- 
fort was made to avoid having Bennett 
brought in person to New York City to 
plead. Every species of pressure and in- 
fluence was brought to bear on Stimson, 
and ultimately on me, to get Stimson to 
permit the plea to be entered in Ben- 
nett's absence and not make him cross 
the water. I speak of what I know at first 
hand, when I say that every effort was 
made to obtain this favor; it was repre- 
sented that if we would agree to do this 
the "Herald" would be most friendly 
with us, that the "Herald" was very in- 
fluential, that we ought not to anger it, 
that to do so would be a very bad thing 
politically, etc., etc. And Stimson ans- 
wered that when he came to enforce the 

148 



and the Ninth Commandment 

criminal law he knew no distinction be- 
tween criminals, and that, just as the 
poorest and most friendless wrongdoer 
would have to appear in person to ans- 
wer to a criminal charge, so the editor of 
the greatest and most wealthy news- 
paper would have to appear in just the 
same fashion. And Mr. Bennett came 
back from France, crossed the ocean to 
the land of his nativity, stayed long 
enough to appear in court and plead 
guilty, and then went back to France. 
He paid over $30,000 in fines for what he 
had done; and never again has that type 
of personal column appeared in the 
"Herald." 

The significant thing in connection 
with the case was the action of the other 
New York papers. They kept the public 
in ignorance of what we were doing with 
the "New York Herald." No attention 

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The Shaping of Public Opinion 

was paid to the suit or to the judgment, 
beyond the two or three lines, put in 
some obscure part of the paper, and 
usually with the names suppressed. The 
average decent citizen was kept in ig- 
norance of what had occurred and is to 
this day in ignorance why the "Herald" 
has ever since followed with envenomed 
hostility, not only the then administra- 
tion, but especially Stimson. 

Conduct such as I have described on 
the part of the "New York Herald" is 
conduct just as base as the conduct of 
the worst public servant in any munici- 
pality, in any state or in the nation can 
possibly be. Conduct such as that re- 
presents the effort to poison the sources 
of information, to poison the minds of 
our people, to put them in such shape 
that they cannot form a correct opinion 
upon the men who represent them in 

150 



and the Ninth Commandment 

public life. No greater crime can be 
committed against the body politic; and 
particularly in this case, where the ac- 
tion that we took against the "Herald" 
was not an action for political wrong 
doing; it was an action against the 
"Herald," against Mr. Bennett, for that 
species of crime that eats into our vitals, 
that eats into the home life, that eats 
like an acid into the moral fibre of our 
people. Yet the press and the magazines, 
with but one or two exceptions, paid no 
attention whatever to what had been 
done, made no attempt to discriminate 
against the "Herald" for the conduct of 
which it had been guilty; and by their 
silence left the public in ignorance so 
that it might readily fall a victim to the 
studied and envenomed misrepresenta- 
tions and falsehoods of the "Herald" 
about the men who had thus brought it 
to justice. 

151 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

You may remember that a high officer 
of the Sugar Trust once testified before 
a committee in Congress that the Trust 
subscribed heavily to campaign commit- 
tees, and that it subscribed to the Re- 
publican Party in a Republican state and 
to the Democratic Party in a Demo- 
cratic state. The Sugar Trust was non- 
partisan in its attitude. In your turn, I 
ask you people here, whatever your poli- 
tics may be, to be non-partisan when 
the question of honesty is involved. A 
certain type of big corrupt corporation 
cares nothing whatever for political par- 
ties when its interests are at stake; and 
labor unions of the same type act in the 
same fashion. And I ask the people, in 
their turn, to pay no heed to parties 
when the great fundamental issues of 
honesty and decency, as against dis- 
honesty and indecency are involved; 

152 



and the Ninth Commandment 

only let them act in the reverse way 
from the action of the corporations and 
unions in question. When it comes to 
the question of a crook I will respect 
party feeling to just this extent : if there 
are two crooks, one of my party and one 
of another party, I will cinch the crook 
of my party first because I feel a shade 
more responsible for him. 

To you men here, to all good citizens, 
I make the appeal to stand for honesty 
in public life, and to stand for the crea- 
tion of an opinion which shall demand 
truth and decency in the press and the 
magazines. Do what you can, by pri- 
vate effort, but especially by organized 
effort and by pressure upon those who 
are your representatives, to bring about 
the day when the man who wilfully mis- 
leads the public, and wilfully lies to the 
public, on any question of interest to the 

153 



311 



The Shaping of Public Opinion 

public, shall be amenable — if possible to 
the law, if not, at least to the force of 
public opinion — exactly as if he were a 
malefactor of any other kind. 

And now, my friends, in closing these 
five lectures I wish again to thank you 
from my heart for having come here and 
listened to me as you have listened. I 
appreciate it more than I can say. My 
plea can be summed up in these words: 
I ask you men and women to act in all 
the relations of life, in private life and in 
public life, in business, in politics, in 
every other relation, as you hope to see 
your sons and daughters act if you have 
brought them up rightly and if you prize 
their good name and good standing 
among decent men and women. 

Good-bye and good luck. 



154 



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